


Just Medicine

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Crying, Dehydration, Developing Relationship, Hanahaki Disease, Hate to Love, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Insomnia, Language of Flowers, Love Confessions, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Passive-aggression, Poisoning, Rough Kissing, Starvation, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:03:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 35,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6684850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'If you want to be the one to kill Izaya, you’ll need to head to Shinjuku soon before you miss the opportunity.'" Shinra brings unbelievable news about Izaya to Shizuo, and Shizuo finds reality to be even stranger than he expects when he investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 100:00

Ikebukuro has been quiet.

Shizuo likes it. His mornings have been calm, his afternoons languid; even the occasional scuffles that break out when he’s on the job with Tom have been less frequent than usual, only one or two a week instead of occurring on a near-daily basis. It’s a strange way to feel, as if the whole city has heaved a sigh of relief and settled into the midsummer warmth like a cat into a sunbeam, but Shizuo isn’t about to complain about this unexpected stroke of good luck, not when it lets him go home with unbruised knuckles and a uniform clean enough to wear again the next day. Everything is easy, simple, comfortable; just the way Shizuo has always dreamed of it being, and just the way he was sure he would never be able to attain. It’s nice to be proven wrong, nice to finally experience what he thought was doomed to forever be a fantasy; it’s a pleasure that keeps him smiling even on his vacation days when Tom has taken a week off to visit relatives in the country and the calm of the city is Shizuo’s to wander.

He’s with Celty right now, sprawled out over the arm of her couch with his chin braced on his hand as he watches the documentary she’s put on with idle attention. It’s not something of particular interest to him -- he’s never understood Celty’s alternate panic and fascination with the possibility of alien life -- but the boredom is nice too, a luxury in its own way for the calm it offers. Shizuo’s watching the screen without really paying attention, his thoughts wandering across the hours left to him of daylight: what should he get for dinner? Maybe Kadota will be free to meet up for sushi; when there’s sound from the door to the apartment, the weighty _click_ of the deadbolt flipping over on itself, and Shizuo and Celty both turn towards the door as it squeaks open and Shinra’s enthusiastic “I’m home!” echoes down the hallway.

“Yo,” Shizuo calls, pitching his voice loud to carry while Celty is typing a greeting of her own into her phone. Shinra emerges from the shadows of the hallway, a smile on his face and bright in his eyes; he looks to Celty first, reading the message on her phone, and then up to Shizuo to wave acknowledgment.

“Hey there Shizuo!” He looks up at the television, a perfunctory glance at the images while Celty reaches for the remote. “Is Celty making you listen to her conspiracy theories again?”

 _They are not conspiracy theories!_ Celty insists as the screen flickers to black and the murmur of sound from the speakers cuts off to silence. _I’m trying to warn those I care about so you’ll be prepared when the invasion comes!_

“Of course you are,” Shinra says, his tone more doting than condescending as he catches Celty’s outstretched hand and brings it to his lips to kiss against her wrist. Celty plumes a burst of embarrassed smoke and turns away like she’s trying to hide; it makes Shizuo chuckle as he straightens from his slouch across the arm of the couch. “You’re perfectly sweet, Celty!”

 _Not in front of Shizuo!_ Celty protests, shadows still ghosting darkness through the air like nighttime come early.

“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” Shinra says, but he lets Celty’s hand go anyway as he paces around the edge of the couch to join them. “Shizuo knows that we’re in love.”

 _That’s not the point_ , Celty informs him as Shinra settles into the space between Shizuo and Celty’s respective positions at the ends of the couch. _It’s a matter of common decency_.

“There’s nothing indecent about my love for you!” Shinra protests. “Even if we were to--”

The shadows move so fast Shizuo doesn’t even see them form. There’s just a flash of motion, night-black cutting over the illumination warm in the room, and then Shinra has a loop of darkness holding his mouth closed and -- after a moment -- another pinning his hands at his side for good measure.

 _Stop talking_ , Celty tells him. Shinra mumbles incoherently; from what Shizuo can tell, it seems to be capitulation to the demand. Celty waits for a moment, as if to be sure Shinra will remain silent; then she taps against her keyboard again. _How is he?_

“Ah,” Shinra gasps as Celty eases the shadows around his mouth and gives him back the ability to speak. “Orihara-kun?” Shizuo stiffens, his lips weighting into a scowl as his shoulders tense, but Shinra’s still speaking, apparently ignorant or indifferent to Shizuo’s reaction next to him. “Yeah, he’s definitely dying.”

There’s a pause of silence. Then Celty: _What?!_ with enough aggressively disbelieving punctuation that Shizuo doesn’t feel he needs to add any of his own.

“That’s why he called me in the first place,” Shinra says, as calmly as if they’re talking about the weather and not about a human being, at least in the technical definition of the word. He shifts against the couch and tugs his hand free of Celty’s loosening shadows so he can push his glasses up his nose. “He was right, though. There’s nothing I can do to help him.” He looks away from Celty and over his shoulder to Shizuo before he flashes a sunny smile. “You should be happy, at least, Shizuo. You’ve been trying to kill him all these years and now you’ll be rid of him for good!”

“What are you talking about?” Shizuo manages to get out somewhere past the echoing confusion in his head. “Izaya’s not _dying_. That’s not funny, Shinra.”

“I’m serious,” Shinra says, still with that smile easy on his face. He lets his hand drop from his glasses to his lap; Celty’s shadows are dissipating into fog to vanish into the air, thinning to invisibility even as Shinra clasps his hands together over his knees. “He really is. He might have another few weeks, or a month if he’s lucky and it doesn’t get worse. But it’s already progressed much faster than one would expect; unless he makes a major change, he won’t last to the autumn.”

 _That’s awful_ , Celty offers, typing more slowly than usual.

“That isn’t funny,” Shizuo says again. “Are you trying to make a joke? Did the flea put you up to this?”

“Of course not!” Shinra protests. “I told you, I’m completely serious. Orihara-kun called me over to do what I could for him. He didn’t say anything about telling either of you.”

“It’s a ploy,” Shizuo growls. “He’s plotting something, no question.”

Shinra shrugs. “It’s possible,” he allows, but his tone makes his skepticism clear. “I really don’t think he intends much of anything at this point. He has other things to worry about.”

“Sure he does,” Shizuo says. “Like how I’m going to actually kill him for whatever he’s trying to achieve with this next time he shows his face here.”

“You won’t have the chance,” Shinra informs him. “If you want to be the one to kill him, you’ll need to head to Shinjuku soon before you miss the opportunity.”

“Fine,” Shizuo says, and pushes to his feet. “I don’t know what that pest is plotting this time and I don’t care. As long as he stays out of the city he can play whatever stupid games he wants with anyone dumb enough to listen to him.” He ducks his head in a nod to Celty. “I’m going to go out and get something to eat. We’ll finish the documentary next time.”

 _That’s fine_ , Celty tells him. _Just call me if you see warning signs for the first scouts of the invasion._

Shizuo huffs a laugh. “Got it,” he says, and then, with a wave to Shinra, “See you two later.” He heads down the hallway towards the door; by the time he has his shoes on Shinra is laughing at something Celty is typing in the living room, the bright happiness in his voice absent any trace of concern for their previous subject.

 _It has to be a joke._ Shizuo shakes his head to clear it of any stray thoughts of either Orihara Izaya or the chaos he inevitably carries with him, and steps out into the hallway to return to the calm of his peaceful city.


	2. 75:05

Shizuo can’t stop thinking about it.

It’s a stupid thing to get caught up on. Either Shinra is taking another step forward into wildly inappropriate humor -- not impossible -- or Izaya is in the midst of some excessively complex plot that requires this as a step -- far more likely, given everything Shizuo knows about Izaya. The city is still peaceful, still calm and sedate everywhere Shizuo looks, but Shizuo can’t take the feeling into himself like he could before, can’t let the peace saturate his mind and draw him into pleasant comfort with himself and with the world. He’s tense, now, his shoulders hunching whenever he doesn’t consciously think to ease them and his thoughts always spiraling back to that one point no matter how he tries to direct them onto other paths; he keeps replaying Shinra’s voice, _he’s definitely dying_ in a tone Shizuo can’t make into a joke no matter how he tries, and every time the words prickle a chill of foreboding down his spine.

It’s not that he’s worried, or at least not that he’s worried about Izaya. It’s the city that feels threatened, like the peace laying heavy over it is just an innocence ready to be destroyed by whatever the other’s latest scheme for destruction is. Shizuo can’t shake the idea, can’t shake the reeling panic in his mind for what Izaya could be planning -- to fake his own death, to start a terror over some invented epidemic, to start a war of revenge between the city gangs. Whatever it is, he’s sure it’s more complex and convoluted than anything he can imagine; Izaya’s plots tend to be that way, as twisted in on themselves as the other’s mind is as a general rule and impossible for Shizuo to follow even when Shinra attempts to explain the details after the fact. Easier to stop them before they begin, by Shizuo’s estimation, and if he can’t do anything to protect the peace of the city directly, well, he’s always been better at dealing with the original cause of the problem anyway.

He goes to Shinjuku the next afternoon, when the weight of anticipating a storm in the air becomes more than he can bear in comfort any longer. Tom is still on vacation, not due to return for another few days; Shizuo texts Celty to let her know he won’t be by, and straightens his shoulders, and heads out to make the trek. He feels better as soon as he leaves his apartment, feels steadier and more confident in his goal with every step he takes; it’s a common sensation, this feel of knots unwinding themselves along his spine as he makes his way to Izaya’s apartment. There’s something satisfying about knowing he’s walking into a fight, about meeting the flea on Shizuo’s terms instead of on his own; Shizuo finds himself grinning as he comes up to the front of Izaya’s apartment complex, finds his hands curling into preemptive fists as he steps through the front doors. The front space of the complex is deserted, the building silent with the absence of all those with legitimate sources of employment; it’s left to pests without any kind of reputable job and to Shizuo himself, standing alone in the lobby as he waits for the elevator to work its way down from the topmost floor and open its doors to let him in. He hits the button harder than he should, can hear the plastic creak and protest under his touch, and then the elevator jerks itself into motion and Shizuo is left to pace out the narrow width of the space as he feels his blood go hotter in his veins with the anticipation of the fight to come. By the time the doors open he can feel his heart pounding hard in his chest, can feel the tension collecting along his jaw and bracing at his mouth, and then he’s striding down the hallway as if he’s been set free, feeling the promise of satisfaction come closer with every step. There’s anger in his veins, uncoiling itself through his blood with all the satisfaction of justification behind it; Shizuo can almost taste the words on his tongue, the demand to know what’s going on that he’ll throw into the sharp-edged smile on Izaya’s face as he answers the door. It doesn’t matter what reasons Izaya gives; the sight of him completely healthy will be enough in itself, Shizuo knows, all he needs is the one moment to confirm what he can feel weighting the center of his chest with certainty. His hands are closing on themselves again, his fingers curling into fists of their own accord; it’s hard to consciously relax them so he can shove against the doorbell of Izaya’s apartment, and impossible to stay quiet while he waits for a response from the other side.

“Izaya-kun,” Shizuo growls, his volume rising in his throat with each syllable that escapes the grit of his teeth. “Open the door, _Izaya-kun_.” His jaw is tense, his mouth tight on a scowl; Shizuo can feel his forehead creasing, can feel anger rising to haze over rationality and calm until his whole body is trembling with anticipation of the violence to come. “What are you planning, I’m going to _kill_ you.” He lifts his hand for the doorbell again, rings longer this time, and as he’s pulling his touch away he can hear the pace of footsteps on the other side of the door, can pick up the sound of someone approaching from the interior. Shizuo’s scowl eases, turns itself into a grin of its own volition, and he takes a breath as he hears the sound of the lock turning over in the door before the weight of it comes open.

“Iza--” Shizuo starts, and then cuts himself off, because it’s not Izaya on the other side of the door. It’s Yagiri Namie, her mouth set into a frown and her stare flat and heavy as she considers him; she’s only opened the door by a few inches, and she’s standing in front of all of those, blocking Shizuo’s view of anything except the sunlight streaming through the windows along the side of the apartment.

“What do you want?” she asks, her voice as chill as if it’s her home Shizuo is demanding access to and not Izaya’s.

Shizuo frowns. “Where’s Izaya?”

“Inside,” Namie says without any hesitation. Shizuo’s gaze jumps up over her head but there’s still nothing to see, just the top edge of bookshelves and the clarity of the glass in the windowframes. “What do you want him for?”

“I’m going to kill him,” Shizuo tells her. “Let me in so I can punch him.”

Namie’s mouth twitches in the tiniest threat of a smile. “You make a convincing argument,” she says.

“Don’t let him in,” comes another voice. It’s faint, hissing in more of an undertone than true volume; Shizuo is sure he wasn’t supposed to hear, that it was intended as a command to Namie or maybe just an involuntary reaction to her perceived surrender. But he recognizes the voice in spite of the attempted quiet on the words, and he’s growling before the sentence is done, his vision flashing into red as adrenaline takes over his body.

“ _Izaya-kun_ ,” he grates out, and he’s shoving against the door, knocking it wider without even noticing Namie’s attempts to hold it shut against him. It falls open, Namie clutching at the doorhandle to keep her balance as she stumbles with it, and Shizuo is stepping into the room, his feet landing with a weight he can feel jolt all the way up his spine. He’s grinning again, excitement rushing through him in time with the adrenaline, and he’s scanning the room as fast as he comes into it, his gaze flickering over the wide-open space in search of the figure he knows is here somewhere. “Let’s _pl_ \--” And then he sees Izaya, on the couch instead of in front of his computer desk, and Shizuo’s words die as all the air left in his lungs rushes out of him in a startled exhale.

Izaya’s sitting on the couch, at least as much as such an active word can be applied to the heavy slouch he has against the support behind him. He has one arm spread out next to him, the other curled in over his stomach; he’s upright, at least, but the hunch of his shoulders says this is a temporary situation at best and one likely to change at a moment’s notice. His head is turned towards the door, his mouth set as he stares at Shizuo; there’s no sign of his usual smile, no space for amusement in the bloodless-white strain all across his face. His eyes are shadowed, his lips chapped; Shizuo can see the lines of his cheekbones more clearly even than usual, like they’re pushing to the surface of Izaya’s skin, and even from across the room the blue-purple insomnia laid under the other’s eyes and the tension dragging at the corners of his mouth are perfectly clear. He looks terrible, looks like he hasn’t slept in days and has eaten less recently, like he’s forgotten how to go through the motions to continue his own existence.

He looks like he’s dying.

Izaya’s expression tenses for a moment; Shizuo can see the stress ripple across his face to tighten at the corners of his eyes and drag at the curve of his mouth as he takes a sharp inhale. Then his jaw sets, his eyes harden, and his lips curve up at the corner, dragging themselves into a smirk that comes nowhere near touching the heaviness in his eyes.

“Sorry, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says, and he looks away, turning to face forward again as he shuts his eyes and closes his mouth against the brief spasm of a cough. “I don’t think I can play with you today.”

If Shizuo had the presence of mind to consider it, he might be angry all over again to have Izaya so completely upend his expectations even in this. But at the moment, with Izaya grimacing pain on the couch he’s leaning against like it’s his deathbed, all he can feel is cold, spreading horror at the awareness that Shinra was right.

There’s nothing left for him to do. Orihara Izaya is dying all on his own.


	3. 74:33

Of all the things in the world Shizuo had prepared himself for on his walk over from Ikebukuro, this was not one of them. He came ready for a fight, for the immediate satisfaction of verbal blows leading into the deeper, more satisfying effort of dragging free whatever projectiles he can lay to hand and throwing them in the general direction of the flea dodging with the speed of the namesake Shizuo has chosen for him. There was some part of him that was even ready for Izaya to just be absent, that was ready to spend an hour getting frustrated by the lack of response to the doorbell and considering the possibility of waiting for him to return before storming back to Ikebukuro with all the pleasure in the day gone to the slow simmer of almost-anger in his veins. But this: sitting at the end of Izaya’s couch while the other smiles weakly at him with the pallor of death clinging to his face -- this is something Shizuo never in a thousand years would have expected.

He’s not even angry. He wishes he was, wishes he could be; it would be easier to handle this, he thinks, if he could muster some shred of his usual ire when it comes to Izaya and armor himself in the threat of his strength if not the application of it. But Izaya isn’t offering the least threat to him, even to Shizuo’s hypersensitive eyes, and he’s still smiling that dreadful, distant smile that is only become more fixed and sliding farther from his eyes the longer Shizuo watches.

“I would think you’d be happy, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says now. He’s been staring at Shizuo the whole time; not with the tight-wound expectation of a fight he usually carries when they’re in the same room but with an inexplicable persistence nonetheless, like Shizuo’s the only thing left in the world and Izaya might as well look at him instead of at nothing. It makes Shizuo’s skin crawl, shivers a chill down his spine and against the back of his neck as if Izaya is feathering a touch over him instead of just watching him from across the distance of the couch. “You always wanted me dead, after all. Or are you upset that something else is going to do the job before you can?”

“Don’t be morbid,” Shizuo says before he can think the better of it. “You sound like Shinra.”

Izaya’s laugh grates in the back of his throat, dragging itself raw and bleeding until he has to turn his head away and cough hard against his hand. “I’m _dying_ , Shizu-chan,” he says while he still has his head turned and still has his hand muffling the shift of his lips on the words. “I think I’m allowed some morbidity at this point.”

Shizuo scowls at Izaya’s turned head. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

Izaya’s smile stretches wide enough that Shizuo can see the corner of it even behind the shadow of the other’s hands. “Now who’s being morbid?” he asks, but any bite on the words is lost to the hiss of air in his throat around some obstruction. He coughs hard, gasps for air, coughs again; and something falls into his palm, the color such a pale white it stands out clear even against the bloodless tone of Izaya’s skin. Shizuo leans back on the couch, his whole body recoiling instinctively, and Izaya looks up to bare his teeth in a smile absent any warmth or humor behind it.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he says, and tosses whatever is in his hand towards Shizuo’s face. It flutters oddly through the air, like it lacks the weight to carry itself through the space, and Shizuo reaches out without thinking to catch it, his initial horror overridden by the reflex to grab and stop what his brain anticipates as a weapon. His fingers close on something fragile and softer than he expected; it crushes in his grip, crumpling in on itself to bleed warmth against his hand, and then he uncurls his fingers and sees the flower in his hold, the shape of the blossom compromised by the fist he made on it but still recognizably bell-shaped.

“It’s called hanahaki disease,” Izaya says as Shizuo frowns confusion at the white flower in his hand. “It’s just a story, most places, but then Ikebukuro isn’t particularly ordinary these days, is it?” Shizuo looks back up. Izaya’s watching him again, his eyes heavy like he’s struggling to hold up the weight of his lashes. In the shadow the crimson tone under his gaze darkens to almost black, like the color is sapped by the lack of light. “Victims start coughing up flowers just like that.”

“What the fuck,” Shizuo says succinctly. Izaya’s smile stretches wider, his lashes dip lower.

“It’s not always deadly,” he says, his voice dragging over the words. “Just an inconvenience, usually. It’s only my bad luck that I would start coughing up foxglove.”

Shizuo frowns. “Is is poisonous?”

“It is if you try to eat it,” Izaya says. “If you don’t lick your fingers you’ll be fine, Shizu-chan. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a choice in the matter.”

Shizuo looks back at the blossom in his hand. It looks unassuming enough, even if it’s still uncannily warm from the heat of Izaya’s throat. “But where does it come from? How do you get it?”

“People can catch it from touching the blossoms” and Izaya laughs, sharp and broken-glass bright as Shizuo drops the flower in a rush. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Shizu-chan. It’s only contagious if you’re in a particular situation.”

“What situation?” Shizuo asks. The flower’s on the floor; he still kicks sideways to shove it aside as he presses his palm to his pants and rubs to free himself of the lingering heat from the blossom.

“Unrequited love,” says a voice from over Shizuo’s shoulder. He jumps at the interruption less than at the reminder that there’s a third person here, but Namie doesn’t bother looking at him; she’s coming around the edge of the couch to the table to set down a cup of tea in front of each of them. It’s only with the addition of the cups that Shizuo notices the basket of flowers in the middle of the table, a cascade of blossoms toppling over each other absent their stems, all snow-white and a perfect match for the one crushed and on the floor. His skin prickles unpleasantly again.

“That’s right,” Izaya says, and leans back against the couch without reaching for his teacup. His head rests against the support, his throat curving up to the illumination from the window. Shizuo can see the strain of tendons with the angle, can see the blue outline of an artery running under the surface of his too-pale skin. Izaya shuts his eyes, laying the dark of his lashes across the bruised-in purple of sleeplessness under his eyes. “You have nothing to worry about, Shizu-chan. As a monster you can’t be in love with anyone.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo tells him. It’s hard to find true heat for the command with Izaya’s mouth still clinging to that twist of a smile and his head canted back so far Shizuo can see the effort of the position along his neck. “Who are _you_ in love with?”

Izaya’s teeth flash in the sudden cough of his laugh. “Come on, Shizu-chan,” he says, and then he’s sitting back up all at once, leaning forward and reaching for his teacup with hands that look too shaky to be trusted even with the minimal weight of the ceramic. His hair falls in front of his face to block the dark of his eyes; all Shizuo can see of him is the edge of his smile, the drag of his lips to bare the threat of teeth under the expression. “You should know this by now. I love all of humanity, of course.” He drags the spoon through the tea, stirring away nonexistent sugar into the liquid. Shizuo can see the angle of bone in the line of his wrist. “It’s too bad I have no chance of winning the affection of every human at once. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, all of humanity loving me like I love them?”

“Stop lying.” It’s Namie again, calling from the other side of the apartment; when Shizuo looks back at her she’s leaning against the staircase, her arms folded over her chest. She’s scowling hard enough that it’s clear from across the distance, if the edge on her voice wasn’t enough to make her frustration clear. “He’s right here, obviously he cares a little.”

“Be quiet.” That’s Izaya, although Shizuo almost doesn’t recognize his voice for the sudden strain on it; when he looks over Izaya’s staring at Namie, his hand closed tight around the handle of his spoon like it’s a weapon he’s ready to throw. His smile is gone like it was never there at all, his jaw so tense Shizuo can see the tremor of the effort humming under his skin. The pallor of his face ought to strip the threat from his words, when he looks too frail to get to his feet, but he looks desperate instead, like he’s drawing on the last of his life force to will Namie to silence from across the room. “Stop talking.”

“If he hated you so much he would have left you here to rot in your own home,” Namie says, but Shizuo doesn’t look back. Izaya is still staring at her, his jaw a threat and his eyes dark with pleading Namie ignores. “You’re already dying, it’s not like you have anything left to lose.”

“What are you talking about?” Shizuo asks. His spine is prickling again, his skin going chill and clammy with nervous sweat under the weight of his clothes.

Namie groans. “Just _tell_ him.”

“No,” Izaya says. “Shut _up_ , Namie.”

“Tell me what?” Shizuo asks. Izaya doesn’t even blink to acknowledge the question. Shizuo turns on the couch to look back at Namie, feeling the irritation that comes with confusion prickling just under his skin. “Tell me _what_?”

“Fine,” Namie says, and looks away from Izaya to meet Shizuo’s gaze. “If he won’t say it himself I will. It’s not his love for humanity that’s poisoning him.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Izaya wails, his voice cracking into panic like Shizuo’s never heard from him before, but Namie doesn’t flinch, and she doesn’t stop talking.

“It’s you,” she says, pitching her voice loud to carry over the rising note of horror in Izaya’s throat. “He’s in love with you, Heiwajima Shizuo.”

The room goes very silent. Izaya’s protest has cut off as if with a knife; Shizuo can’t even hear the sound of the other’s breathing in how utterly still the space has gone. Shizuo’s ears are ringing very faintly, as if with static heard from a long way away.

“You’re joking,” he finally says, but he can’t hear his own voice either, and he doesn’t wait to see Namie’s headshake of negation before he twists to look back at Izaya. “You’re _joking_.”

Izaya doesn’t look at him. He’s staring at his hands, his fingers gone slack on the spoon in his teacup; Shizuo can’t see his eyes. His smile has vanished like it was never there.

“No way,” Shizuo says. “You _have_ to be kidding.”

Izaya drops the spoon, drops his hold on the side of the teacup, twists sideways and away as he starts coughing, harder than before, the effort of the movement shaking all through the hunch of his narrow shoulders. He’s gasping for air, hissing with the effort like he’s suffocating, but Shizuo doesn’t move to help him; he just stays where he is, locked to stillness as flowers spill past Izaya’s lips to tumble like snow to the floor.

Shizuo has always thought he might like Izaya more if he understood him better. Now, with his spine prickling with the slow spread of certainty carried on each shudder of effort through Izaya’s shoulders, he thinks he would prefer ignorance.


	4. 74:26

Namie leaves while Izaya is still coughing. Shizuo barely hears her called “See you tomorrow,” the words more irritable than sincere, but he does hear the sound of the front door slamming shut to leave him alone with Izaya. Shizuo has a prickle of irrational panic at being deprived of what minimal support Namie’s presence offered, but by the time he looks up towards the door she’s gone. If he bolted for the hallway he might be able to catch her while she’s still in the building -- but Izaya is still hunched over his knees and wheezing for breath, even if the rush of flowers seems to have stalled for the moment, and much though Shizuo doesn’t want to be alone with him he can’t make himself move towards the door and leave Izaya looking like he might be about to pass out at a moment’s notice. Shizuo doesn’t know what he’d do if Izaya actually _did_ collapse -- he’s skimming through scenarios of choking, trying to figure out if he could actually help without accidentally crushing all Izaya’s ribs in the attempt -- but then Izaya gasps a lungful of air, and pushes himself back to upright on the couch, and the crisis seems to have passed for the moment.

“Are you--” Shizuo starts to ask, but the question dies to silence on his lips. It’s too strange to ask Orihara Izaya if he’s okay when Shizuo has spent much of the last several years trying to make sure he’s not; it’s just the rhythm of the situation pushing the words against his lips, the uncomfortable self-consciousness of the moment demanding the most ordinary human conversation he can offer even when it’s stupendously inappropriate for what relationship they have. Shizuo’s expecting some kind of commentary about this, braced for the edge of a mocking taunt to fall from Izaya’s chapped lips, but:

“Leave,” is all Izaya says, the one word steady and clear even though his voice has gone ragged at the edges with the effort breathing costs him.

Shizuo blinks. “What?” He glances back to the door, to the escape it offers, but he doesn’t move. “Namie just left, you’ll be--”

“Go,” Izaya says again. He’s not looking at Shizuo; he’s staring straight ahead, his gaze aimed at the window Shizuo is very sure he isn’t really seeing. His jaw is set, his mouth a hard line of intention; Shizuo can see his throat work as he swallows convulsively. “Get out of my house.”

“There’s no one else here,” Shizuo points out, not at all sure Izaya has really processed this fact. His spine is prickling cold again, discomfort unfolding itself all across his skin like the chill of winter is in the air in spite of the sunshine streaming in through the windows. Izaya’s still not looking at him. “I can’t leave you alone like this.”

“You can,” Izaya tells him, still without turning his head, without even blinking. He’s biting the words off against the tension in his jaw, the grate of them pulling raw in the back of his throat. They sound like blood on his tongue and twist Shizuo’s stomach with unfamiliar alarm. “Get out and leave me alone.”

Shizuo can feel the stress in him unfold along familiar creases, can feel the discomfort of uncertainty heat and harden into the reassurance of anger familiar and solid in his veins. “What’s _wrong_ with you?” he asks, his voice dropping into a growl he can feel purr comfort against the inside of his chest. “There’s no one else here to make sure you don’t choke yourself on those stupid flowers, I’m not going to abandon you here to die.”

“I’m already dying,” Izaya says in that same forced-flat voice. “You might as well leave me to it.”

“ _Stop_ it,” Shizuo snaps, and he’s reaching out without any conscious thought at all, closing his hand hard at Izaya’s hunched-in shoulder and dragging with more force than he intends. His grip slides across Izaya’s sleeve, digs in at the edge of bone barely covered by cloth and skin, and Izaya hisses at the pressure but Shizuo’s dragging the other around to face him before he has a chance to regret the rough aggression of his hold. Izaya’s balance wavers, nearly vanishing as Shizuo pulls him, and for just a moment his gaze comes up to lock on the other’s. His eyes are tense, strained on pain and a tangle of emotion at the corners, and there’s a crease at his forehead, anger or misery Shizuo isn’t sure which one and doesn’t have time to determine before Izaya’s mouth curls on a frown and he ducks his head to hide the dark of his eyes behind the shadow of his hair. Shizuo growls fury, grabs at Izaya’s other shoulder too, and when he pulls Izaya collapses into the motion, either not bothering with resisting or giving so little force to it that Shizuo doesn’t even notice.

“This is stupid,” Shizuo tells Izaya, spitting the words at the dark of the other’s hair, at the top of his bowed head since Izaya won’t lift his chin to meet his gaze. “You’re not in love with me, you _hate_ me.”

“Let me go,” Izaya grates, reaching up to shove at Shizuo’s shoulder. There’s no force to the motion at all, none of the burst of pain from a knife wound Shizuo was more than half expecting; there’s just the impact of a palm against Shizuo’s arm, the weight so minor he almost doesn’t notice it, and then fingers curling around his vest, dragging into a fist on the fabric as Izaya shoves at his other shoulder. “Get out of my _house_.”

“ _No_.” Shizuo tightens his hold. “You’ll die.”

“That’s what you want,” Izaya says, his head still tipped down and his voice cracking on the words. “Get _out_ , monster.”

“Stop being _stupid_.” Shizuo can feel his mouth dragging into a scowl, can feel the frustration of confusion tangling itself into his thoughts to wash them red with the blind anger that always overcomes him at times like this, that is tightening his hands so hard at Izaya’s bony shoulder that he can feel his fingers digging in under the line of the other’s shoulderblade. “I don’t want you to die like this.”

“Get off me,” Izaya says, but he’s ducking in closer, and his hold on Shizuo’s vest is turning into a drag instead of a push. “Get out, Shizu--” and he wheezes for air, gasping an awful rattling lungful of air as he teeters forward. His other hand comes up to grab unseeing at Shizuo’s shirt, and for just a moment Izaya’s fingers are clutching at Shizuo’s collar, his thumb slipping on bare skin and digging in painfully against the other’s throat. Shizuo hisses at the pain, braces his arms to shove Izaya back off him -- and Izaya shudders in his hold, his head dropping forward as he gasps, and coughs, and spills a flood of blossoms into Shizuo’s lap. Shizuo tips back, his reaction too immediate to be restrained; but Izaya is holding onto him, the press of his fingers gone unbreakable with desperation, and Shizuo’s shoulders hit the arm of the couch while Izaya is still vomiting flowers onto him. He can’t pull away without getting up, can’t disentangle himself without shoving Izaya off by force; and then Izaya gasps for air, his forehead lands hard at Shizuo’s shoulder, and when he inhales it sounds so much like a sob in his throat that Shizuo’s flush of anger chills and evaporates in a rush of sympathy too instinctive for even his hatred to overcome. His hold at Izaya’s shoulder eases, his fingers uncurl from the bracing hold he has against the other’s collarbone, and Izaya’s fingers at his neck tense for a moment before sliding away to hold to Shizuo’s collar instead of his skin. Izaya takes another breath, the sound choking in the back of his throat, and Shizuo turns his head to stare out the window instead of watching the wet of tears splash onto the petals in his lap.

He’s not ready to feel any more pity for Izaya than he already does.


	5. 74:04

Izaya pulls away after a few minutes. Shizuo wasn’t sure what to do with the eerily light weight of the other clinging to him; basic human sympathy said to let Izaya stay where he is, but self-preservation and years of history said to extricate himself from this dangerously close proximity as rapidly as possible. Luckily Izaya has barely caught his breath back from the telltale hiccup of dying sobs before he shoves at Shizuo’s shoulders to push himself back and away across the distance of the couch, and Shizuo is left with just the flowers spilled across his lap and the prints of Izaya’s hold at his shirt as evidence of the last few minutes.

Izaya takes a breath and coughs without any force to the sound as he lifts a hand to drag his arm roughly across his face; Shizuo doesn’t try to see the damp at his lashes any more than he listens for the tremor of tears in Izaya’s voice when he says “You can dump them in there,” with a flippant gesture towards the basket. “It’s easier to deal with than leaving them on the floor.”

Shizuo does as suggested, collecting handfuls of the petals across the couch to add to the heap already in the basket. There’s still dozens around Izaya’s feet from his first coughing fit, but the other doesn’t move to pick them up; he leans back instead, dropping his weight against the support of the couch and tilting his head back like the weight of it is too heavy to bear alone. Shizuo glances at him sideways but Izaya’s not looking at him, isn’t even making the effort to smirk; he’s just draped against the couch with every line of his body sagging against the support, his eyes shut on exhaustion and his mouth soft around the ragged edges of his breathing. Shizuo thinks he might be falling asleep, thinks that might be best for the both of them, but he’s just heaping the last of the flowers into the pile in the basket when Izaya says, “It was Shinra who told you,” sounding more tired than upset.

Shizuo looks at him again. Izaya still has his eyes shut, still has his head tipped back. Shizuo can see the rhythm of his heartbeat in the pulse at his throat.

“Not directly,” Shizuo says, looking away to the snowy white of the blossoms in front of him again. “I was visiting Celty when he came back from seeing you and was there when he was talking to her.”

“I shouldn’t have called him,” Izaya says, his voice level and considering, like he’s sincerely contemplating the alternatives to his past decisions. “There’s nothing he can do to help me with this anyway.”

Shizuo doesn’t know why he keeps talking. It would be easy to let Izaya’s words hang in the air, would be easy to let the conversation fade and die while Izaya slipped into the sleep that would let Shizuo have a few minutes of privacy to call for help, or to convince himself to leave after all, or just to deal with the tangle of the emotions he hasn’t had a chance to process since he came in the door of the apartment. But the room is too quiet without speech, silent enough that he can hear the rasp of Izaya’s breathing on the other end of the couch, and anything is better than listening to the effort it costs the other just to manage an inhale.

“How long have you…” Shizuo starts, and then he doesn’t know how to finish his sentence, isn’t sure how to frame the symptoms of Izaya’s illness in a way that makes any sense in his head. Even with the personal experience of seeing Izaya cough a cascade of blossoms into his lap, Shizuo’s mind rebels against the concept and stalls the sound of his voice in his throat.

“Been vomiting flowers every chance I get?” Izaya offers. Shizuo looks back over at him; there’s tension at the very corner of the other’s mouth, the threat of a laugh that fails to materialize into sound. “A while.” He turns his head away, coughs through an exhale, but there’s nothing beyond the air at his lips. When he speaks again the smile is gone. “I haven’t been able to eat for a week.” He blinks his eyes open but doesn’t turn; Shizuo can see the weight of his lashes illuminated in profile by the sunlight. “I called Shinra when I stopped being able to see straight.”

“Fuck,” Shizuo breathes. “You can’t _see_?”

Izaya rolls his eyes. “I can see,” he says, and lifts his head from the couch for the sole purpose of giving Shizuo a flat look. “But it’s blurry. I can’t read text, my eyes won’t focus.”

“You could get glasses, or--”

“You’re missing the point,” Izaya cuts Shizuo off without letting him stumble through the rest of his sentence. “It doesn’t _matter_ if I can read or not. I could have gone completely blind and it wouldn’t make a difference. I’m _dying_ , Shizu-chan, haven’t you been paying attention? Not being able to see clearly for a day or two won’t make things much worse than they already are.”

There’s pressure against the inside of Shizuo’s chest, like a knot settling in just under his throat and weighting the inside of his ribcage. He’s not sure if it’s horror, or pity, or both in equal parts; there’s something about the attempted flippancy brittle in Izaya’s voice that is more sharply painful than a physical wound would be. Izaya’s mouth is twisting again, turning up on a smirk like the expression is breaking free of his control; the tension just drags his eyes darker instead of softening the edge of his gaze. Shizuo can’t look away; it feels like it would be a surrender, like it would be admitting he can’t face down Izaya’s situation even as an outside observer instead of the one experiencing it firsthand. So he doesn’t look away, doesn’t flinch back even as his stomach twists on uncomfortable sympathy and his spine prickles with empathetic horror, and when he speaks to ask, “How poisonous are they?” his voice comes out so level it surprises even himself.

Izaya’s smile pulls wider, dragging the corner of his mouth into a grin that doesn’t ease the strain in his eyes. “Poisonous enough,” he says, sounding almost amused, like it’s someone else’s demise he’s taking pleasure in instead of his own. “If I could stop coughing them up I could probably recover.” His laugh comes suddenly, so loud and brittle Shizuo jumps with the burst of sound. “But there’s no chance of that, is there?”

Shizuo can feel his jaw set at the reminder, can feel the chill of guilt rush across his skin like an electric shock. He doesn’t know what face he makes, but it’s apparently clear enough to understand because the sharp edge of Izaya’s smile fades and eases into something softer, something far harder for Shizuo to face than the raw mania in his expression before.

“Yeah,” he says, and turns away again to tip his head back and gaze up at the ceiling. “That’s what I thought.”

Shizuo looks away, back to the basket of white blossoms at the edge of the table. Framed between the two untouched cups of tea it looks beautiful, something done deliberately instead of a consequence of unavoidable mortality; the petals look like snow, clean and untouched and pristine in direct opposition to the bruised-in shadows across Izaya’s skin and the chapped-raw edge of his lips.

“What do they mean?” Shizuo asks, reaching out to catch one of the blossoms between his fingers. It _is_ beautiful, poisonous or not; the curve of the flower against his palm pulls his gaze along it, tracing out the shape of the blossom with his eyes as much as with his touch. “White is for purity, isn’t it?”

“And why would _I_ be pure,” Izaya says for him. When Shizuo glances back Izaya’s looking at the flower in his hand instead of at his face, his mouth quirked on amusement Shizuo can’t make sense of any more now than he ever has. “No, Shizu-chan, it’s not purity. You really ought to brush up on your floriography, if the color is the only thing you know to pay attention to.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says automatically. His hand closes on the flower, crushing the shape of the blossom against his palm before he can stop himself, but Izaya’s smile just goes wider, dragging amusement far enough that it lightens even the shadows in his eyes. “What _does_ it mean, then?”

“What indeed,” Izaya says. He looks away from Shizuo’s fist and to the basket instead; when he reaches out it’s to drag his fingers across the tops of the blossoms, ruffling the petals with fingers so thin Shizuo almost expects the weight of the flowers to be enough to halt their movement. “Foxglove affects the heart, Shizu-chan. It’s a medicine, sometimes, if you take small enough amounts of it.”

Shizuo frowns at him. “Is this about your stupid human-love thing?”

“No,” Izaya says without looking at him. “No, you’ll like this better, I think. The digitalis in foxglove can heal heart conditions, but it’s a poison in large quantities. But in bouquets foxglove means something completely different.”

“You said that,” Shizuo growls. “What does it _mean_ , Izaya-kun?”

Izaya’s smile is soft, and slow, and oddly gentle. “It means insincerity,” he purrs, framing the words slow as poetry before he tilts his head enough to glance at Shizuo sideways. “Doesn’t that amuse you, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo doesn’t laugh. “I’m not glad you’re dying,” he says.

Izaya shuts his eyes and huffs a laugh, the sound so faint it’s nearly a cough before he can catch it back. “No,” he allows. “You’re not like me.”

Shizuo’s never heard him sound so honest.


	6. 71:51

“You should go.”

Izaya says it quietly, without lifting his gaze from the idle circles he’s tracing through his long-since cooled tea with the handle of his spoon. Shizuo finished his almost an hour ago, and even then the liquid was barely clinging to the last vestiges of heat; by now, with the setting sun casting everything in the room in burnt orange and red, Izaya’s must be entirely cold in his cup. Shizuo hasn’t seen him drink any of it since Namie brought it out before she left.

“No,” he says, scowling at the top of Izaya’s head since the other isn’t looking up to meet his gaze. “I’m not leaving until Namie gets back.”

“She’s not coming back,” Izaya says towards the ripples across the surface of his tea. “She left when her shift ended, she’s off the clock until tomorrow morning.”

Shizuo can feel his frown deepen, can feel it dragging at the corners of his mouth to match the tension collecting along his spine. “She just leaves you unsupervised all night?”

“Of course she does.” Izaya draws the spoon free of his cup, sets it alongside the ceramic in the saucer. He still doesn’t look up, as if the movement of the spoon is of far greater interest than whatever Shizuo is saying. “I only pay her for certain hours of the day. If she’s not getting paid, her time is hers to do with as she pleases.”

“Doesn’t she _care_ that you’re--”

“No,” Izaya cuts off Shizuo’s sentence. “No, she doesn’t.” He tips his head to look up at Shizuo at last, but the shadow cast by his hair and the fading illumination of the sun leave his expression too unreadable to be an aid to picking apart the grate under his tone. “Sorry, Shizu-chan, if you were waiting for my best friend to come back in the front door to babysit me through my dying hours you’ve been wasting your time.”

Shizuo sets his jaw. “There must be someone who would help.”

“Yes,” Izaya sighs, and leans back against the couch again to shut his eyes. It’s unpleasant to watch him tip back against the support; his whole body sags boneless against the cushions like he can’t be bothered to hold it up, his breathing drawing hard in his chest like the angle is crushing the air out of him. He looks exhausted in a way Shizuo’s never seen anyone look before, like the exertion of continued living is too much for him to bear in comfort. If Shizuo looks, he can see the prints of his hold from earlier rising in dark-shadowed bruises just inside the loose collar of Izaya’s shirt. “I called him already. He said I was dying. Fascinating insight, I would never have guessed without a doctor to tell me.”

“If you asked him to--”

“To what?” Izaya cuts Shizuo off again, his voice catching on the effort it takes him to achieve enough volume to stall the other’s words. “To hold my hand while I face the specter of my own mortality? To sympathize with me over the drawn-out end I brought on myself? Shinra has better things to do with his time and I don’t want him here anyway.” His head turns, his throat works; there’s no flowers that come with the cough, but Shizuo can still see the effort of the action shudder all through Izaya’s shoulders under the weight of his shirt. Izaya looks back up, blinking his eyes open so he’s staring at the ceiling again; even in the failing light, Shizuo can see the blank distraction behind his eyes. “I don’t want _anyone_ here.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Shizuo growls, feeling it like a mantra on his tongue. “I can call someone else, or I can take you to the hospital--”

“ _No_ ,” Izaya says, and then he’s straightening from the couch in a single jerky movement borne more on effort than strength. “I’m _not_ going to the hospital to spend the last of my life being studied like an aberration.” His eyes are dark, his gaze hard on intensity in spite of the tremor of effort in his shoulders as he braces himself upright. “I’m not a monster like you, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo hisses. “No,” he says, “You’re just in love with one.”

Shizuo had thought Izaya was pale before. His eyes are shadowed into bruises, the weight of the color under his lashes nearly a match for the darkness caught behind the blood-red of his eyes, and the monochrome of falling twilight catches in the hollows under his cheekbones and the too-thin line of his jaw. But there must have still been some color under his skin, some suggestion of humanity left in Izaya’s mouth and the corners of his eyes, because now Shizuo can see it drain out of the other’s expression like water pouring out of a cup. Izaya’s eyes go wider for just a moment, his mouth comes open on a tiny huff of reaction like Shizuo’s hit him, and in the first heartbeat of that shocked-hurt expression Shizuo feels guilt surge into him, an unfamiliar weight curling in his stomach from the bloodless pale of Izaya’s face. He opens his mouth, to apologize or to clarify: that he didn’t mean it, that he doesn’t believe it, that there’s no way it can be him that Izaya wants; and Izaya reaches out sideways without looking to grab at the teacup sitting on the table. His hold slips on the weight, liquid slops over the edge and across the table and saucer in a flood, but he doesn’t look at it and he doesn’t stop the arc of the cup through the air as he flings it at Shizuo. Shizuo flinches instinctively from the projectile, turning his head away as if that will save him from the impact, but by the time the cup hits his shoulder there’s no force behind it at all and almost no liquid left in it either. There’s a splash of cold tea over Shizuo’s vest, the weight of the cup bouncing off his shoulder and to the floor, and even then it doesn’t hit with enough force to break, just catches and spins itself to stillness alongside the couch.

“Get out,” Izaya says, his mouth as set as Shizuo has ever seen it and his eyes so dark they look black in the absence of illumination.

“Izaya--”

“Get the _fuck_ out of my house, _monster_.” Izaya’s hands are curling to fists, the intent behind them clear even if the shape they make is so fragile Shizuo can see the bones of the other’s knuckles in clear relief under the skin.

Shizuo starts to stand. “I’m not going to leave you alone.”

“I don’t want to see you,” Izaya tells him. His chin is tipped down and his mouth is set; Shizuo can see the strain trembling in his shoulders from the tension he’s holding in his arms. “I don’t want to look at you and I don’t want to think about you.” He chokes on an inhale, flinches through a cough, but then he’s right back to glaring, his stare still vicious even as his voice goes faint on the pressure in his throat. “I don’t _want you_.”

“Fine,” Shizuo says, getting to his feet and backing away around the edge of the couch. “Look, I’ll stay over here, you won’t have to see me, you can forget I’m here, but you won’t be alone.”

“Fuck you,” Izaya tells him, but the words get tangled with a wheezing inhale as he doubles over and reaches to catch himself with a hand in the spill of tea across the table. “I’d rather be alone.”

Shizuo turns away as Izaya gasps and starts to cough, faces the far wall as white blossoms spill from Izaya’s lips to splash into the liquid. He sits without looking back, leaning against the support of the couch while he listens to Izaya struggle himself back to ordinary breathing on the other side of the furniture. It takes a few minutes just for the rhythm of the other’s inhales to fall back into a nearly-normal pattern, and nearly ten before Shizuo can hear Izaya push himself to his feet and start to shuffle slowly towards the kitchen. Shizuo doesn’t move, doesn’t offer to help even when Izaya’s breathing goes strained with the effort of walking back and forth as he cleans up the mess of the spilled tea and the flowers; he just stays where he is, staring unseeing at the far wall of Izaya’s apartment and listening to the effort of Izaya’s breathing while he feels the unfamiliar chill of guilt bloom into his veins like a poison all his own.


	7. 65:29

Shizuo falls asleep eventually. He didn’t expect to -- sitting on the floor of his archenemy’s house and listening to said enemy struggling for breath isn’t a particularly soothing setting -- but after a few hours of stillness boredom and exhaustion get the better of him and leave his head dipping forward under its own weight and his thoughts drifting to dreams before he’s even shut his eyes. Finally he submits to comfort enough to strip off his tea-stained vest and the bowtie tight against his collar and kicks his legs out in front of him so he can lean back against the support of the couch. It’s still not comfortable, and there’s still the hiss of Izaya’s breathing to serve as distraction; but Shizuo can feel the weight of exhaustion all across his shoulders and dragging at his eyelids, and when he shuts his eyes he slides into unconsciousness before he has time to wonder if he’ll be able to.

He wakes a few hours later, jerking to consciousness so suddenly he can’t figure out at first what woke him. The surroundings are disorienting, and there’s a crick in the back of his neck when he moves, but neither of those should be enough on their own; and then he blinks, and his hearing catches up with the rest of his startled-awake self, and he realizes what pulled him from sleep just as Izaya chokes a fractured inhale before surrendering to another fit of coughing.

He sounds awful. Shizuo can hear how hard Izaya’s struggling for breath, can hear the low drag of desperation under the sound every time the other manages to eke out an inhale from around the violent fits of coughing. Shizuo doesn’t know how long it’s been going on -- if it’s only been a few minutes or if it took longer for the disturbance to drag him up from his exhausted sleep -- but he can’t turn his head and reach for sleep again over the sound of Izaya choking on the flowers that are poisoning him. There’s a part of Shizuo -- a small part, more reflexive than reasonable -- that wants to offer comfort to someone in need, that aches with the desire to press a hand between the other’s shoulderblades or fit the reassurance of fingers into his hair. Shizuo can feel the whole couch trembling with how hard Izaya is coughing; he must be clinging to the frame with white-knuckled intensity in an attempt to hold himself still against the effort wracking his body. It’s still Izaya, and Shizuo still hates him, but it’s hard to focus on the memories of why Izaya more than deserves this when all Shizuo can hear is the miserable pain of another human being on the other side of the support at his back.

It goes on for a while. Shizuo expected it to be a single fit of coughing, a flood of blossoms intense but as brief as those he saw earlier in the day; but either Izaya’s not trying to hold it back anymore, or this is far worse than those, because the seconds turn into minutes, and the minutes collect on themselves until Shizuo loses count of them, until there’s just the sound of Izaya gasping and coughing on the other side of the couch, until Shizuo’s exhausted thoughts wonder if there’s ever been anything else in the world at all. It goes on and on, the sound of Izaya hacking up the foxglove that’s killing him expanding to fill the entire room and all the corners of Shizuo’s drowsy consciousness, and somewhere between the pain of exhaustion and the unfamiliar sympathy tensing in Shizuo’s throat guilt makes its reappearance to whisper _this is your fault_ in a voice in the back of Shizuo’s head faint but no less sharp for that.

Shizuo frowns at the wall in front of him, at the shadows that make up the space of Izaya’s enormous apartment. This isn’t his fault, there’s no way any of this could be his fault -- but Izaya’s gasping again, choking out half-formed inhales around the fits of coughing that are catching him, and it’s for Shizuo, isn’t it? It seems absurd, it seems an impossibility to even consider that Orihara Izaya could have been hiding something as mundane as a crush all this time; but Shizuo saw his face after Namie’s casual statement, and he saw how white Izaya went at Shizuo’s own unthinking comment, and however excellent an actor Izaya might be Shizuo’s never before known him to look so vulnerable. Amused, yes, vicious, certainly; but fragility isn’t a thing Shizuo knew Izaya _could_ feel, much less have written so clear across his face. Perhaps there is some extended plot laid underneath all of this -- with Izaya, it’s always at least an even bet -- but Shizuo doesn’t think Izaya could feign the unhealthy pallor suffusing his skin, and he doesn’t think the miserable set of Izaya’s jaw when he demanded that Shizuo leave was an act either. It’s stupid to trust him, stupid even to consider he might be telling the truth in this --

But then, it wasn’t Izaya who said it, was it? Shizuo blinks, stares unseeing at the wall while Izaya’s coughing subsides into breathless gasps of air on the other side of the couch. It was Shinra first, off-hand and casual to Celty instead of to Shizuo; if Shizuo hadn’t happened to be over he wouldn’t have heard at all. And then Namie, throwing the information out like it was meaningless, like it was _obvious_ , like it was something Shizuo should have known himself. And Izaya: silent with misery, jaw set like he never intended to speak again, eyes dark and shoulders hunched and _miserable_ , no one could feign unhappiness so well and Shizuo’s never known Izaya to pretend misery in any case. It’s the manic glee that he deals in, smiles that he doesn’t mean and laughter he doesn’t feel and--

“Fuck,” Shizuo breathes, too softly to hear, barely loud enough for him to feel the exhale against his lips. Behind him, Izaya coughs weakly, a rush of air that turns into a choked-off sob halfway through, and something in Shizuo breaks, some last resistance in his psyche gives way to acceptance. Izaya is dying, dying of the poison he’s contracted in himself; and it’s for Shizuo, it’s for some sort of love no less sincere for how inevitability twisted it must be to exist in Izaya’s mind. _Izaya dying_ is an unpleasant thought, a sourness that curls shadowy in the back of Shizuo’s head; but _love_ is a worse one, the flattering warmth of the idea completely counteracted by the unavoidable awareness that someone is dying for it, by the knowledge that anyone, even Orihara Izaya, is losing their life for love of something so worthless as Shizuo. It aches in Shizuo’s chest, burns heat in the space behind his eyes, and for a long moment all he can do is lean against the back of Izaya’s couch and listen to the man he has sworn to kill cough his life away for want of someone who doesn’t deserve it.

It stops, eventually. Shizuo doesn’t know how long it takes; he shuts his eyes after a minute, tries to focus on breathing evenly as if that can somehow offset the struggle Izaya is making for every inhale. Maybe it does help, in some weird way, or maybe it’s just that the worst of the fit has passed, because Izaya does go quiet finally, the hacking weight of his coughs giving way to the drag of more normal breathing in his raw throat, until Shizuo has counted off a whole span of minutes in relative calm. He’d like to believe Izaya has fallen asleep; but the occasional shift against the couch is proof against that, and if Izaya’s awake Shizuo has to ask.

“Is it,” he starts, but his voice catches in his throat, he has to pause to swallow his speech back into clarity and strip it of the weight of the emotion he doesn’t want to set free before he tries again. “Is it really about me?”

There’s a pause, a beat of silence so long Shizuo wonders if Izaya is going to ignore the question entirely. But then there’s a gust of a sigh, an exhale so hard it nearly turns into another cough, and then Izaya’s voice, raw and bleeding but pitched loud to fill the whole space of the room. “You’re a fucking idiot, Shizu-chan.” He doesn’t sound angry; he sounds tired, bone-deep exhausted like the words are carrying the last of his strength with them, and he doesn’t say anything else.

Shizuo doesn’t need him to. The words might not be an answer, but the pained resignation on them is enough to offer all the certainty Shizuo needs.


	8. 58:44

Shizuo does fall back asleep, after that. Izaya fell stubbornly silent after the last non-answer he gave, and if Shizuo could still hear the rasp of effort on the other’s breathing, after a few minutes it slowed to the gentle rhythm of unconsciousness instead of the effort of waking pain. Izaya’s inhales are still audible, still catching into struggle at the back of his throat; but Shizuo is exhausted, worn down by the joint effect of stress and physical discomfort until he can’t muster any real resistance to the draw of sleep, and eventually he lets his head weight heavy at the couch and allows the rhythmic drag of Izaya’s breathing to pull him into uneasy dreams.

He wakes to the sound of the front door coming open. There’s no warning, no knock or chime from the doorbell; just the _thud_ of the lock turning, and the scuff of the door dragging across the floor, and Shizuo is only just lifting his head to blink bleary attention at the unfamiliar surroundings when Namie’s “Why are you still here?” cuts through the haze in his thoughts to demand a response.

“What?” Shizuo asks, because he’s still trying to get his vision to clear and his attention is off-balance in the disorienting surroundings. He pushes a hand through his hair and blinks up at the dark shadow of Namie in the entryway, but Namie’s rolling her eyes and looking past him anyway.

“Izaya,” as she toes her shoes off at the doorway and steps forward into the room. “Why the hell is _he_ still here?”

“Fuck,” Izaya groans from the other side of the couch. Shizuo can feel the shift of the furniture when he turns against the cushions. “I can’t get rid of him, he refuses to leave.”

“I bet you’re delighted,” Namie says as she turns her back on them both and moves towards the kitchen. “Your very own monster, finally right where you always wanted him.”

“Shut the fuck up, Namie,” Izaya says, but the order sounds more exhausted than sincere, like he’s struggling even to form the sound of the expletive in the back of his throat. “Call the police or something and have them drag him out.”

“I’m not your mother,” Namie informs him without turning around. Shizuo can see her rummaging through the cupboards for a glass before filling it with water from the tap. “You’re still capable of speech, call the police yourself.”

“I’m _dying_ ,” Izaya protests. “I can’t believe you won’t do this one thing for me so my life can end in peace.”

“I’m not about to waste my pity on you.” Namie shuts off the tap and comes back across the floor with the glass of water; Shizuo can hear Izaya shift again on the couch, can hear the weak effort as he offers another of the chest-deep coughs he’s been struggling through all night. “You brought this on yourself, you’re getting exactly what you deserve.”

“Thanks,” Izaya says. Shizuo thinks it’s intended as sarcasm, but the tone necessary to grant it any kind of a bite falls flat in the scratch of the other’s throat and it just comes out sounding tired. “Your bedside manner is amazing, Namie-san.”

“I’m not your nurse any more than I’m your mother.” Namie sets the glass down on the table and moves back as Izaya starts to cough again. “And if _he’s_ here,” another tilt of her head towards Shizuo, combined with a glance brief enough to indicate his absolute unimportance to Namie’s own existence, “You don’t need me here to keep you supervised.”

“No,” Izaya says, so sharp Shizuo flinches from the edge on his voice, and when he moves this time it’s to push himself upright. If Shizuo looks up he can see the tangle sleep has made of Izaya’s hair, can see the shadows of insomnia laid in darker under his eyes even then they were last night, as if a night of attempted sleep has had the opposite of the intended effect. “Namie, don’t you _dare_ , if you want to keep your job you’ll stay right where you are.”

“It’s not like it really matters,” Namie says, and turns her back on them both to move towards the door. “I’ll be out a job in a few weeks at most, anyway. That’s what your doctor friend said, isn’t it? Though you don’t look like you’re going to make it to the weekend, like you are now.”

“Get out, then,” Izaya tells her, his voice dragging on the edge of command. “I’d rather be alone than with you.”

“On my way,” Namie says. She slides her feet back into her shoes before she reaches for the door, and then pauses, her hand on the knob as she stares at the surface in front of her.

“You can go too,” she says, and it’s not until she looks back that Shizuo realizes that she’s talking to him, that the words so flat and emotionless on her tongue are intended as a suggestion or at least a statement for his benefit, on some level. “He won’t thank you for your company any more than for your pity.”

“ _Namie_ ,” Izaya growls, his voice cracking on the weight of the warning on his tongue.

“He’s still the same person he always was,” Namie says as she pulls the door open. “It’s not like you suddenly owe him anything. That’s not how love works.”

“Get _out_ ,” Izaya spits, but Namie’s already going, stepping through the door and letting it slam shut behind her without any attempt to soften the impact. Shizuo flinches at the sound but Izaya doesn’t move; when Shizuo looks back up at him he’s still glaring at the door, his jaw set so hard Shizuo can see the tremor of effort along the line of the other’s throat. There’s a moment of quiet but for the sound of their joint breathing; then Izaya turns away without looking at Shizuo, twisting on the couch as he reaches for the glass of water Namie left on the table.

Shizuo gets up slowly. His vest and tie are still on the floor but he leaves them where they are; there doesn’t seem much point in pretending to formality when his only audience is hunching his shoulders like they’ll make a wall sturdy enough to keep out Shizuo’s attention as well as his touch. The glass in Izaya’s hand wobbles as he lifts it; Shizuo can see the ripples across the surface, the liquid telling of the effort it takes Izaya to lift the minimal weight even if his sleeves cover the tremor along his arm.

“I’m not going to leave,” Shizuo says finally, pitching the words as softly as he knows how. They still come out loud against the painful quiet in the apartment, as if the resonance of his voice is trying to crush the hiss of Izaya’s breathing to silence.

“Fuck you,” Izaya says, but it’s weaker even than his attempted sarcasm with Namie was, like he’s bled himself dry of even the energy to manage true frustration. “I don’t want you here.”

Shizuo sets his jaw on stubbornness. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I hate you.” Izaya doesn’t look at him; he has the glass of water pressed between both hands now, his fingers tightening so hard against the sides that Shizuo can see his knuckles going to blue-veined white with the effort. “Get the fuck out of my home, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t move. After a pause Izaya lifts the glass to his mouth and attempts a swallow of the water; he barely manages a mouthful before a cough catches in the back of his throat and he has to stop to put the cup back on the table and lean forward to gasp for air over the support of his knees. Shizuo can see his shoulders tremble with every hiss of air, can feel his own chest ache as if with borrowed pressure with every shaky inhale Izaya manages; but he doesn’t come forward to offer comfort, and Izaya doesn’t turn around to see him watching.

Shizuo doesn’t think Izaya would appreciate it even if he made an attempt to help.


	9. 55:48

Shizuo keeps himself occupied for a few hours. Izaya’s apartment is overlarge and unfamiliar, but it’s not so complex that Shizuo can’t find his way around after a very few minutes of investigation. He only opens the door to Izaya’s bedroom long enough to recognize what it is-- he’s uncomfortable enough with the insight he’s already inadvertently gained over the past day, he’s not interested in gaining more -- but the bathroom and the shower in it are of far more interest. He doesn’t have a clean change of clothes, but the hot water is still a comfort to muscles knotted as much on stress as from the discomfort of sleeping sitting up on the floor, and when he ducks his head under the spray and shuts his eyes he can let his awareness of the present flicker away under the simple pleasure of the water hitting his skin. He stays in the shower longer than he intends, just letting the steam in the air and the weight of the water splashing across his shoulders lull him into almost-peace, but it’s worth it by the time he emerges to find the mirror so clouded with steam he can’t even see the outline of his reflection behind the haze. It doesn’t matter, really; he just pulls his shirt and pants back on, and runs a hand through his towel-dried hair, and then goes back out to the living room to see if Izaya is any more amenable to his presence than he was before.

Izaya is asleep, as it turns out, curled in on his side over the couch with the rasp of his breathing for a lullaby. The glass of water Namie left is barely touched; whatever he tried to drink of it didn’t sit well, apparently, and there’s another handful of flowers added to the heap in the basket on the table. There’s not many; Shizuo wouldn’t have even known they were new except for the color splashed across them, a dark, saturated crimson like blood spilling from the curve of the blossom itself, like the petals are collecting visible pain from the ache Shizuo can hear laid sandpaper-rough under Izaya’s breathing. Shizuo doesn’t touch them; he just looks for a moment, staring at the flowers instead of at Izaya, and then he goes to the kitchen to seek out the teakettle Namie made use of the day before.

There’s not much to eat in the cupboards, once Shizuo has the tea steeping and starts looking for some kind of sustenance. There are a few boxes in the fridge, all aggressively labelled with Namie’s name in a sharp-edged handwriting that promises death or at least extreme pain to anyone who takes them; Shizuo leaves those in favor of the box of cup ramen at the very back of the cupboard, so dusty he doesn’t bother checking the expiration date on the container he retrieves. It’s not like it can really go bad, except to become more stale than it is already, and he doesn’t care particularly what he eats so long as he can take the edge off the distraction of hunger in his stomach. It’s not particularly satisfying, in the end, but the tea is better, and the view out Izaya’s windows is beautiful enough to catch and hold Shizuo’s attention as he drinks his way through the pot of tea alone while Izaya keeps sleeping on the couch. The city looks different from this high up; it’s strange to see how small people look at this distance, how impossible it is to tell one from another. It makes Shizuo feel giddy, like he’s suffering from the vertigo that he’s never experienced in his life, like the illusion of being physically larger than the shapes below has caught dizziness into his head and is sending his worldview tilting on its axis.

He doesn’t know how long he stands at the window staring like that with his cup of tea cooling slowly in his hand. It’s only when there’s a startled hiss of breath from behind him that he thinks to turn, and by the time he’s looking back Izaya is falling back to the couch from his initial reflexive motion upon waking.

“I thought you were gone,” Izaya says, turning to lie flat across the couch instead of resuming the defensive hunch he adopted while he was sleeping. “Or that at least you’d have the decency to kill me while I slept. You missed a golden opportunity, Shizu-chan, must I spell these things out for you before I manufacture chances for you?”

“You’re awake,” Shizuo says, aware even as he says it that this is a statement utterly inane in how obvious it is. “You’ve been sleeping all morning.”

“Why are you still _here_?” Izaya asks without lifting his chin to hold Shizuo’s gaze. His arm is angled up over his head, his wrist draped heavy against the arm of the couch; Shizuo can see the relaxed curl of his fingers over his open palm, the usual threat of a too-tight grip around a knife handle so entirely absent it’s hard to overlay the two into the same existence. He feels faintly dizzy again. “I don’t want you here, _you_ don’t want to be here, why haven’t you left already?”

“I can’t,” Shizuo says. “I can’t leave you here to die.”

Izaya huffs a laugh so weak it comes out as more of a sigh than amusement. “I’m dying anyway,” he says. “With or without you, Shizu-chan, the only difference this makes is that you’re forcing me to have an audience. If you had any humanity at all you’d let me decide to die alone if I damn well please.”

“I don’t want you to die at _all_ ,” Shizuo growls, the rising heat of anger in his chest familiar even if the words are so unexpected he almost doesn’t recognize their sound.

Izaya turns his head to look at him. From across the room it’s hard to make out the shadows catching along his cheekbones or the dry-chapped skin at his mouth, but his eyes are as dark as ever, and even the exhaustion behind his smile isn’t enough to blunt the razor-sharp edge of the lopsided grin he flashes. “Funny thing, I thought _you_ of all people would be delighted by this. You always say you want me dead, have you changed your mind at the last minute?”

“I don’t,” Shizuo says. “Not like this. I don’t want you to die...” _For me_ , his mind offers, but he can’t make the words come. “...Because of me.”

Izaya huffs another laugh, this one so breathless Shizuo can better see it in the shape of Izaya’s mouth than he can hear it, and turns his head away to stare at the ceiling again. “Well,” he says, his voice bright and sharp and cracking like glass at the edges, “at least I’ll be able to spite you in that.” He turns away again, tipping in towards the back of the couch and bringing his arm up to cover his face instead; when he coughs the sound is muffled but Shizuo can see the tremor jolt all along Izaya’s shoulders, can see his whole body shake with the force of the effort running through him. Shizuo stands in front of Izaya’s window, the city at his back and Izaya shaking before him, and all he can think is the one thing he can’t fit to the shape of his lips.

 _I don’t want you to die for loving me_.


	10. 52:27

They’re quiet again after that, silent over a span of time unbroken except by the pattern of Izaya’s breathing and his occasional coughing fits. Shizuo doesn’t push for conversation; it’s unpleasant to hear the bleeding edges on Izaya’s voice, painful to hear the attempt at sing-songy taunting come out so harsh and pained compared to what Shizuo remembers, compared to what Shizuo expects. It’s hard enough to hear it with the thought of how different it is; the thought that he might never hear Izaya attain that honed-edge cut to his voice again is more than Shizuo can stand to face for more than a handful of seconds. Izaya doesn’t tell him to leave again; Shizuo doesn’t know if this is because he’s accepted Shizuo’s insistence on staying or, more likely, just that he’s run out of energy to keep protesting. He still looks awful, parched and shaky and exhausted in a way that extend far beyond the shadows under his eyes and the heaviness in his limbs; he doesn’t move to sit up again all afternoon any more than he reaches for the glass abandoned on the table, just lies staring alternately at the ceiling or out the window and not at Shizuo at all. Eventually it’s Shizuo who moves to sit down, to press his shoulders against the solid weight of Izaya’s countertop and stare straight out the window to watch the washed-out blue of the sky instead of the dizzy motion of the people in the city below. He wonders if Izaya wishes he could look down instead of straight out, wonders if Izaya misses the view of the humans he has always so claimed to love; but then he likely can’t make out the details of the streets below from the distance, not if his vision is blurring as he said it was, and Shizuo doesn’t want to interrupt whatever delicate balance of peace has formed in the silence and space between them for the moment. So he stays still, and he stays quiet, and he lets the hours slide away with only the rasp of Izaya’s breathing to see them off.

It’s hunger that stirs Shizuo out of his daze of inaction. The ramen he had earlier was enough to take off the worst of his morning hunger pangs, but with the sun moving into the angle of afternoon he can feel his stomach cramping on lack of sustenance, his body demanding more fuel than the tea he’s been drinking continuously since finishing his shower this morning. It’s not until he’s opening the cupboard again that he thinks of Izaya, of the sharp angle of bone too close to skin in his wrists and the hollows shadowing the space under the line of his cheekbones, of the constant effort of coughing sapping strength he doesn’t have to spare, and when Shizuo frowns at the packages of ramen it’s not his own hunger he’s thinking about.

There’s not much he can do. There’s minimal food in the kitchen even when he looks for it, and the pots and pans are shoved so far back on the shelves he has to get on his knees to find them. But there’s the ramen itself, at least, and a carton of eggs in the back of the near-empty fridge, and between a pot of water and eggs cracked into the broth once the noodles are something closer to cooked than otherwise Shizuo ends up with a bowl of soup that looks and smells significantly more appetizing than the bland liquid he downed earlier in the day. By the time it’s done Izaya’s shifted on the couch again, has turned all the way over on his side with his head pillowed against one arm; Shizuo braces the too-hot bowl with the tips of his fingers and carries it across the room, coming closer to the other than he’s been since the morning.

“Izaya,” he says. He intends it to be soft but the word comes out louder than he intends, like it’s echoing off the walls of silence that have formed over the course of the day. Shizuo expects Izaya to flinch or at least to frown at the sudden interruption, but he barely reacts at all, just turns his head to look up at Shizuo with his eyelids heavy with exhaustion and his lips parted on the effort of his breathing. It’s not an invitation by any means, but neither is it the full rejection it might be, and Shizuo expects that’s the best he’ll get at the moment anyway. He comes around the end of the couch to sit on the far side, just out of range of Izaya’s feet, before he sets the bowl of soup down on the table. Izaya’s lashes dip, his gaze settling against the bowl for a moment, but he doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t move to sit up or to do anything else.

Shizuo clears his throat. “You should really eat something.”

“I shouldn’t,” Izaya says, and he looks away, staring blankly in the direction of the window again. His mouth is setting itself into a stubborn line; Shizuo wonders how much effort that one action is costing him, how much energy it takes him to manage determination at his mouth when all the rest of his body is slumped like it’s too much for him to move. “I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten anything since I got here,” Shizuo points out as calmly as he can manage. “You _must_ be hungry.”

“Since a while before that, too,” Izaya says, still without looking away from the window. “It doesn’t make a difference. I can’t keep anything down for long anyway. It’s easier to cough up the flowers if that’s all I have in my stomach.”

“You can’t just not eat,” Shizuo tells him. “You’ll starve.”

“So what?” Izaya asks, and he does look away from the window then, turning his head against his arm to stare shadows up at Shizuo’s face. “So maybe I’ll die a little faster than the poison would take me, so what, what does it matter? I’m dying all the same, Shizu-chan, or don’t you get that yet?”

Shizuo can feel his shoulders hunch, can feel his body bracing itself against this subject. “Even so--”

“ _Look_ at me,” Izaya says, snapping the words like an order.

Shizuo blinks, frowns. “I _am_ looking at you, what--”

“You’re not,” Izaya cuts him off. “ _Really_ look. Stop turning away and pretending this isn’t happening or that some miracle is going to manifest and everything will go back to the way it was.” He shoves against the couch, his movements harsh and jerky with effort; even once he’s pushed up against the support of one elbow Shizuo can see the strain trembling along his arm, can see the curl of effort tensing Izaya’s fingers into a fist. His hair is falling heavy around his face, like the dark shadow of it is a burden all on its own; with his chin tipped down the hollows at his cheeks and the pale of his mouth make him look skeletal, like the shape of death is pressing itself close against his skin and ready to break free at a too-harsh move.

“I’m _dying_ ,” Izaya says again, the words dragging themselves through the weight of sincerity on his tongue, and Shizuo can see it in the shadows in his eyes, can feel it in the chill of instinctive horror settling into his own veins and cringing panic along his spine. “I can’t sit up straight, I can barely walk, I haven’t been able to eat for a week and now I can’t keep water down either. I have a week, maybe, at best, and you trying to drag that out by an extra day or two is neither appealing nor helpful.” His elbow slips, his weight slides; when he falls back to the couch it’s heavily, before Shizuo has a chance to catch him even if he could decide he wanted to. Izaya flinches at the impact, his expression crumpling into pain for a moment; then he composes his face, and tips onto his back, and lets the couch support his weight as he turns his chin down to stare shadows at Shizuo once more.

“If you really wanted to help me you could make it faster,” he says, the words so flat on his tongue Shizuo doesn’t realize for a moment what he means. “You said you wanted to kill me, before.” Izaya tilts his head back, just by an inch, but it’s enough to bare the line of his throat, enough to let the light catch suggestion onto his skin and draw Shizuo’s gaze involuntarily to the desperate rhythm of the pulse just under his jawline. “You could do it right now,” Izaya says, and Shizuo can see him swallow, can see the motion work against his neck. “You wouldn’t even have to try very hard.” He huffs a laugh, his lips dragging apart on a smile that flickers like candleflame against his mouth. “It’s hard enough to breathe as it is, it’d only take a few minutes. Or you could break my neck, Shizu-chan, you could do that with one hand, couldn’t you? I wouldn’t fight you, it would be so easy.” He shuts his eyes; his lashes fall to shadow against his cheeks. “It would be a kindness, really.”

Shizuo swallows, trying to fight back the wave of nausea that hits him at the thought of Izaya’s throat collapsing under his thumbs, at the feel of bone snapping in his grip. He’s never really thought about it in such detail before; or maybe it’s just that it’s never seemed so near before, that it’s never been so easy to imagine the blood-dark light in Izaya’s eyes flickering and fading to black. He didn’t expect the image to be so horrifying, to send his stomach into freefall like the gravity of the world has suddenly evaporated.

“No,” he says, feeling the words echo cold inside the hollow of his chest. “No, no way, I’m not.” He has to swallow again. “I’m not going to _kill_ you, Izaya.”

“It was worth a try,” Izaya says, and then he turns his head and opens his eyes to stare out the window again. “I should have known you hate me too much to spare me even a few days of suffering.”

“I don’t,” Shizuo says before he can think, the rebuttal falling off his lips before he can feel the weight of it in his throat, before he can taste the sincerity on his tongue. “I don’t hate you.”

Izaya’s eyelashes flutter, his attention skipping down to Shizuo’s face again for a too-brief moment; but then he turns his head away, and sets his mouth on determined silence, and leaves Shizuo to let the burden of his own honesty settle heavy as lead inside his chest.


	11. 50:22

Shizuo’s admission does not make things better.

It’s hard enough to have the words ringing in his own head with a sincerity he didn’t expect and an honesty so immediate it’s hard even to grasp how he could have ever believed the opposite. He keeps reaching for hatred, for anger, for irritation, for some shred of the emotion that seemed so familiar he thought he would carry it forever; but every time he reaches for _hate_ Izaya’s face throws back _love_ , the spill of white flowers in the basket on the table proof too immediate of that fact for Shizuo to turn away from. It seems unfair that Izaya can twist even this last pure thing, can take the rage Shizuo has always felt for him and turn it around in his mind to some kind of almost-affection, however poisonous and twisted it has turned out to be. The thought leaves Shizuo undone, picks out the knots of his anger to leave him more defenseless than he has ever been before, and Izaya...Izaya makes no more sense now than he ever has. It would be a relief to feel the cut of a knife, Shizuo thinks, would be a comfort to have the bite of Izaya’s grin flashing at him from across the too-short distance of the couch; but Izaya is as contrary in this as ever, refusing to offer this shred of familiar comfort for the ruins he has made of the structure of Shizuo’s life by offering that love he himself always insisted no one would ever feel for a monster. Shizuo feels more betrayed by that than by anything else Izaya has ever done, and worst of all even that isn’t enough to surge anger hot in him, because it’s impossible to muster the crush of fury in his veins when there is no resistance left in the exhausted slump of Izaya’s body over the couch.

He’s not doing well. Shizuo ends up eating the soup without arguing to get his way; he doubts he’d be able to take the point without physically forcing Izaya to eat, and with the fragility of bone so close under all Izaya’s skin Shizuo’s never felt the rough edges of his own strength so clearly. It would be too easy to press too hard, or shake too roughly, and snap a collarbone or crush a wrist, to bruise open the blood vessels lying so near to Izaya’s skin Shizuo can see the blue lines of them winding over the tendons in his wrist. Izaya doesn’t react when Shizuo finally pulls the bowl towards himself in silent surrender, and that peace is more chilling than anything else; it speaks to an exhaustion running even deeper than what Shizuo suspected, if Izaya can’t even manage a dig of verbal abuse in the absence of a physical attack. _Another few weeks_ , Shinra had said, but Izaya looks like he’s fighting for every breath, looks like his body is getting heavier with every passing second, as if the ground is trying to swallow him up into a grave before he’s yet stopped fighting for those rasping inhales, and Shizuo can’t imagine him clinging to life for more than a week at the most. He makes no move to reach for the water on the table, or to push himself upright on the couch; he just lies there, slumped over into an angle that can’t be comfortable and carries all the marks of him being too tired to care, his eyelashes dipping heavy over his unfocused stare with each blink like the feathery weight of them is too much to bear.

It’s hard to watch. Shizuo thinks it would be hard to see anyone looking that way, regardless of his personal feelings towards them; with the pressure of guilt tight as a fist around his heart, he finds it as agonizing to see as it is impossible to look away. It feels like a strange kind of penance, maybe, to sit here well after the soup is gone and after Izaya’s drifted into what looks like a restless doze over the support of the couch and stare at the damage love of him has done to the one person he thought he cared for least. Izaya’s shoulders are hunched, his chin tucked in close to his chest like he’s trying to protect himself, the shadows under his eyes so dark Shizuo wonders if they aren’t deepening with every attempt at rest instead of easing. His wrist is angled in front of him, his arm forming a wall before his face as if the fragility of the barrier could stop anything with any determination at all. It wouldn’t stop a punch, wouldn’t stop a touch; but it finally stops Shizuo’s stare, pushing his attention sideways and away, and when Shizuo gets up to move it’s to reach for the barely-touched glass of water so he can take it to the kitchen and refill it with fresh liquid. He takes longer than he should, rinsing the print of Izaya’s dry-chapped lips off the edge of the glass before he fills it back up with water running as cold as he can get it from the tap; and then he’s stalled as long as he can, and he has nothing left to do but bring the glass back over the the couch where Izaya is frowning in his sleep.

“Izaya,” Shizuo says, but it’s too soft, or Izaya is more deeply asleep than Shizuo realized, because he doesn’t stir at the sound. He’s still curled in around his arm, still has his shoulders hunching forward around himself, and Shizuo can’t stand to keep looking at him like this, can’t stand to see the pain-marked exhaustion all over Izaya’s face when unconsciousness has robbed him of the ability to frame together even an attempt at a mask. He sets the glass down on the table and reaches out for Izaya’s shoulder to touch his fingers against the soft of the other’s sleeve. “Izaya.” The briefest contact, Shizuo’s hand barely glancing off Izaya’s arm; and Izaya jerks awake, gasping a startled lungful of air and shoving himself upright with more force than Shizuo thought he had the strength for. His arm swings out to shove Shizuo’s hand away, his balance teeters like he’s going to fall; but when Shizuo reaches to catch his elbow Izaya snaps “Don’t _touch_ me” with so much vicious sincerity under the word that Shizuo recoils instinctively before he can think through the reaction. Izaya braces a hand against the arm of the couch to lean heavily against the support; Shizuo is pretty sure it’s more than half pure stubbornness keeping him upright rather than actual possession of the strength to do so.

“Sorry,” Shizuo says without thinking, without tasting how strange that word feels in relation to Izaya. “You should drink something if you can.”

“Go away,” Izaya grates, the words tearing over his throat until they come out dripping on unseen blood. “I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” Shizuo insists, though he’s not sure _what_ exactly it is he’s feeling, except that the hurt of it weighting the inside of his chest is a far sharper pain than anything the edge of Izaya’s knife has ever achieved. “I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t want your help either,” Izaya says. He reaches out to shove the glass away across the table; the liquid inside splashes at the action, spilling over the lip and down the outside to puddle against the dark of the surface. “I have enough poison on my own, I’m not so stupid as to take anything you give me.”

“I’m not going to _poison_ you,” Shizuo protests, and then again, because Izaya doesn’t look like he’s listening: “I just want to help you.”

“I don’t want it,” Izaya tells him, and he’s pushing himself to his feet, bringing himself to upright so suddenly Shizuo doesn’t have time to reach out to stop him. Izaya’s balance wavers, his legs visibly trembling under his weight, but when Shizuo steps forward reflexively Izaya swings an arm wide, the angle of his wrist hitting Shizuo’s chest so hard Shizuo flinches back more from the damage Izaya might do to himself than from the minimal pain of the impact. “ _Don’t touch me_.”

Shizuo takes a step back, lifting his hands instinctively to offer his palms to the hunch of Izaya’s shoulders and the darkness behind his eyes. “I’m not,” he says, and then takes another step back, because Izaya’s hand is still a fist at his side and Shizuo doesn’t know what would be worse, him finding the strength to break his knuckles against the resistance of Shizuo’s body or him not being able to, and he doesn’t want to find out. Izaya stares at him for a moment, his mouth so tight on a frown Shizuo thinks it’s the only thing keeping him on his feet; and then he turns away and takes a step forward that is so unsteady it’s only his bracing hold against the couch that keeps him upright.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Izaya declares to the room at large, without so much as tilting his head to aim the words at Shizuo. “I’d hate to catch something from you.” Shizuo watches him for a few steps, watches him maneuver around the barrier of the furniture with his hold to keep him upright; then Izaya straightens his shoulders, his fist tightening hard across his knuckles, and lets the couch go so he can move towards the hallway on his own ability.

“Let me help,” Shizuo says, even though he knows it’s futile, even though he can see the way the plea under his voice just tenses Izaya’s shoulders the harder. “Please.”

Izaya pauses. Framed by the shadows of the hallway Shizuo can see how hard he’s fighting for balance, can see the effort it takes him to turn so he can look back towards the other. But he turns back anyway, pausing in the middle of his struggle to stay upright so he can fix Shizuo with a glare the darker for the strain setting tight against his mouth.

“No,” he says, and his voice might be raw and cracking open on more pain that Shizuo’s ever before heard but the viciousness is familiar, the bright ache it brings in Shizuo’s chest is as recognizable as a gunshot wound. “One of us has to remember how to hate, _monster_.” He turns back away before Shizuo has an answer, before Shizuo has his breath, and then he’s moving down the hallway again and all Shizuo does is stand still and watch him go.

He’s afraid that if he looks away, Izaya will lose the only reason he has to force himself to remain upright in the first place.


	12. 33:56

“There has to be _something_ you can do,” Shizuo pleads into the phone. “You said he had weeks, still.”

“I said a month if he was lucky.” Shinra’s voice is as easy as ever, chirping bright like he’s giving far better news than what he has to offer. From behind Shizuo Izaya coughs again; when Shizuo looks back there’s another spill of flowers over the other’s trembling hands, the curving throat of the blossoms stained almost to black with the spreading spots of dark color they’ve been collecting over the past several hours. “It’s possible he’s deteriorating faster than that, if his symptoms are worsening.”

“He’s coughing up flowers all the time,” Shizuo says. Izaya doesn’t move to drop the flowers into the basket emptied last night and now halfway to full again. The snowy purity of the first blossoms is absent, now; it’s been hours since he coughed up anything lacking at least a few crimson spots speckling the white petals. The rising heap of flowers is spattered with blood-colored stains, now, the shadows on them matching the ones Izaya has clutched in his hand. He falls back to the couch instead of sitting up to reach for the table; as Shizuo watches he rolls onto his back and lets his arm fall across his eyes, as if even the faint light creeping past the clouds in the morning sky is too much for his blurred vision to take. Shizuo can feel his heart stutter in his chest, can feel his expression twist into pained sympathy, and he turns away again to face the empty half of the apartment instead. “He’s not eating and he’s not drinking anything.”

“It does sound like it’s gotten worse,” Shinra hums, sounding as if Shizuo is describing a curious problem rather than the imminent death of one of his best friends. “You being there probably isn’t helping, given the cause of all this.”

“I can’t leave,” Shizuo growls into the phone, his answer made reflexive over days of repetition as answer to Izaya’s steadily weakening demand that he go. “There’s no one else here, I can’t abandon him when he can’t even walk.” Shinra’s words sink in slowly, Shizuo’s exhausted mind processes them even more slowly; when he finally catches up it hits him like a wave, a slow trickle of suspicion at first that swells to certainty in the span of a single startled inhale.

“Wait,” he says. “You _knew_?”

Shinra’s laugh is so bright the static of the phone line clips it off into a crackle to leave Shizuo flinching from the suddenly piercing volume. “Of course,” he says immediately, without a trace of self-consciousness on his answer. “I’ve never heard of someone actually catching hanahaki disease, but there’s a first time for everything. And if he’s in love with someone, it had to be you.”

“What the fuck,” Shizuo growls. “Did everyone in this entire city know about this except for me?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Izaya calls from the couch. His voice is weak, straining itself to inaudibility on his attempt at teasing; Shizuo wishes he could muster more anger when he looks back over his shoulder, but all he feels is that awful knot in his chest tighten harder on his breathing as he looks at the slump of Izaya’s shoulders and the shadow of his arm blocking his gaze from seeing Shizuo looking at him.

“I can’t imagine it’s common knowledge,” Shinra says while Shizuo is still looking at the sleeve of Izaya’s shirt, at the way the cuff hangs loose and outsized against the fragility of his wrist. “I’m his only real friend, after all, of course I would know. But most people in the city wouldn’t suspect.” He skids himself up into another laugh. “Or care even if they did know. We’re probably the only people who even know he’s dying right now.”

Shizuo’s breathing sticks, his throat closing up on a surge of some emotion he would call pity, if not for the set of Izaya’s mouth to remind him that even the leading edge of his sympathy is as unwanted as his attempts at assistance. There’s something sharply painful about having the city laid out below the windows, the streets with the people Izaya claims to love clear to see to Shizuo but impossible now for Izaya’s failing vision to pick out even if he could keep to his feet long enough to make it to the glass, and none of them caring enough to look up and wonder where the shadow that always seemed so dominant in Shizuo’s life has gone. It takes a force of will to turn around, takes a moment for Shizuo to swallow back the knot in his throat, and even once it’s clear his voice comes out rough enough that it’s a struggle to enunciate his syllables to coherency. “There has to be something we can do.”

“There’s nothing,” Shinra says immediately, so fast Shizuo wants to protest, would if he didn’t know Shinra’s insistence is from accuracy instead of avoidance. “Sometimes people just die. Even doctors can’t save everyone all the time. If it were an infection or a wound I could fix it, no problem, but he’s effectively poisoning himself. There’s nothing I can do when it’s something he’s the cause of.”

“There has to be something,” Shizuo repeats, gritting his teeth against the burn behind his eyes and the tension fluttering like a heartbeat crept high in his throat. “There _must_ be.”

“No,” Shinra says again, just as fast as before but a little more gentle, like he’s only just now noticing the grate on Shizuo’s voice and the effort behind his words. “There’s not. The symptoms would have to stop, and the only way for that to happen is for the cause to be removed.”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m here or not,” Shizuo tells him, pitching his voice deliberately low so it won’t carry even though Izaya is so still Shizuo’s not sure he’s still listening. “It’s not like someone can just fall out of love that quickly.”

“Oh no, of course not,” Shinra agrees immediately. “He’s been in love with you since you met, I hardly think he’s likely to get over it now.” And then, while Shizuo’s still reeling from that casual declaration: “It’s not the fact of him being in love that’s causing the problem by itself, though.”

Shizuo shuts his eyes. “Shut up,” he says, but there’s no force behind the words at all. “I know.”

“Yes,” Shinra says, sounding almost thoughtful, very nearly like he’s actually concerned with the issue at hand. “That is the problem.” Then, with an inhale like he’s shaking off the weight of the consideration: “Celty’s going to leave for work soon, I need to see her off. Do you want to come over for dinner later tonight?”

“No,” Shizuo says, opening his eyes and shaking his head to clear it. “No, I’m going to stay with Izaya.”

“Alright,” Shinra says without the least hesitation. “Good luck!” And the line clicks to silence, almost before Shizuo can mumble through a token farewell to close off the conversation.

Izaya’s still lying unmoving on the couch when Shizuo looks back at him. His arm has slid up through the dark of his hair and off his eyes, but he’s not looking at Shizuo; he’s staring at his hand instead, gazing vague attention at the flowers caught in his fingers as he curls his hand to let them topple one over the other. Shizuo looks at the angle of his wrist, at the idle shift of his arm contrasting so sharply with the slack exhaustion written into the sprawl of his legs and the heavy weight of his head against the cushion. Shizuo’s eyes burn, his throat tightens, and he has to look away again, has to turn his head to stare unseeing out the window while he waits for the ache of unwanted emotion to ease its hold on his heart.

It’s not even a matter of if he wants to, of whether he would choose to make that change in himself if it would spare Izaya from his present suffering. Shizuo doesn’t know if he would, doesn’t know if he could convince himself into something so fundamentally contrary to what he’s always believed he felt for the other. But then he doesn’t know if he could leave anyone, even Izaya, to die for some misplaced love for someone like himself, someone who has never been worth such devotion, even in a twisted form. But that hardly matters, not when even making the decision won’t solve the underlying problem.

Even if he wanted to, Shizuo has no idea how to _make_ himself fall in love with someone.


	13. 31:44

It’s precisely noon when Namie returns.

Shizuo hadn’t been sure she was going to. The morning hours passed one at a time with no sign of Izaya’s ostensible (possibly ex-) employee and no sign of concern on this point from Izaya; the latter might be a function of exhaustion, or an uncertainty about the time of day, but Shizuo isn’t sure how serious their last dialogue had been or how likely it is that Namie just won’t return. He’s nearly convinced himself that she’s gone for good, that it’ll just be he and Izaya coexisting all day in the silence that has become the closest thing to peace it seems they can manage; but then there’s the click of a key in the lock, and the door comes open, and Namie comes in.

She looks to Shizuo first. “You’re still here,” she says, her tone falling somewhere between mild irritation and intense boredom at his continued presence before she looks back to the couch when Izaya is still lying. “You should have told me you had a babysitter for the day, I would have stayed at home.”

“I don’t remember giving you the day off,” Izaya manages. His voice is loud enough to carry across the room but it’s rougher than Shizuo has ever heard it, like the color staining the flowers he coughs up is blood in truth and not just in seeming. “If I didn’t need you I would have the decency to let you know.”

“You don’t know the meaning of _decency_ ,” Namie says, still standing in the entryway; she’s made no move to step out of her shoes. “There’s no point in me being here when you have someone else to play fetch for whatever you need.”

“He’s a trespasser,” Izaya responds. He’s not looking at Shizuo; from what Shizuo can tell, his eyes aren’t even open. He hasn’t moved at all since Namie came in the door. “He’s just here to gloat over me dying since he won’t do it himself.”

“Shame,” Namie says. Shizuo can see her shift as she turns back towards the door. “It would save us all some time if he would.”

“Don’t leave,” Izaya orders, attempting a commanding tone that just falls to cracking desperation in his throat. “Get me a glass of water.”

“Ask your nursemaid for it,” Namie says, pulling the door open again. “I’m going home. I’ll see you on Tuesday, if you hold out that long.”

“ _Don’t go_ ,” Izaya says, the words skidding to a terrified plea like Shizuo’s never heard from him before. His arm slides across the couch, the angle of his elbow against the cushions granting him a few inches of height in exchange for effort Shizuo can see tremble all across his shoulders. “ _Namie!_ ”

The door swings shut, the latch falling into place as Namie leaves; for a moment the room is silent, Izaya staring fixedly at the door like he can call Namie back and Shizuo staring at Izaya, his whole body tingling cold horror at the panic he could hear lacing the other’s shout. Then Izaya shuts his eyes, and breathes “Fuck” very softly, and lets the desperate support of his elbow slide away to drop him back to the couch.

Shizuo looks away. It’s hard to watch Izaya for any length of time when he’s like this, with his body slumping against whatever support he can find just from inability to hold itself up and his voice raw and dragging in his throat until there’s no trace of the lilting laughter that so characterizes Shizuo’s perception of him. It’s like he’s a different person entirely, like the taunting amusement and too-fast movements Shizuo knows so well have died in advance of the rest of Izaya to leave some strange undercurrent of a self that Shizuo never suspected was there, never dreamed could even exist. Izaya seems human without his maddening facade, fragile and mortal in a way Shizuo has never considered him before, and it’s hard to look at him, hard to see the tension of true unhappiness across his forehead and the tremble of barely-withheld emotion catching at his lips. Easier for Shizuo to watch what he’s doing, to pay more attention to the basic task of filling a glass with water than it requires, just for the sake of occupying his mind with something other than Izaya for a few seconds.

Izaya doesn’t move when Shizuo approaches with the glass. His eyes are shut, his shoulders flat against the couch, but he hasn’t drifted into the insomniac-exhaustion that sometimes grants him a few minutes of unrestful sleep; there’s too much tension in his mouth for that, there’s still the angle of a frown dragging his chapped lips down at the corners. Shizuo steps close, fitting himself into the space between the table and the edge of the couch rather than setting the glass down on the surface, and when he says “Izaya,” it’s as he lowers himself to sit on the floor alongside the couch.

Izaya opens his eyes, turns his head to look at Shizuo. For a moment their eyes meet; then Izaya’s focus slips sideways to catch at the water glass Shizuo is offering instead. His mouth tenses further, twisting down hard at the corners; but he reaches out without voicing a protest, closing his fingers against the sides of the glass as he turns in to push up to half-sitting once again. Shizuo isn’t holding the glass tightly -- there’s barely enough force in his grip to keep it from toppling over -- but Izaya can’t pull it free until he’s using both hands, and even then the glass wobbles dangerously in his grasp as he brings it to his lips to attempt a mouthful. Shizuo can see the white of tension along each of Izaya’s knuckles, can see the crease of strain in his forehead as he swallows. He manages a mouthful, another, and then Shizuo can see the cough catch him, can see his throat tense on the reflex a moment before his third attempt inverts into a coughing fit against the edge of the cup. Shizuo has to grab at the cup to save it from dropping entirely, and even then a sizable amount of water spills over the lip and drips down Izaya’s wrist; he doesn’t seems to notice, or doesn’t care enough when he’s still coughing wetly against the hem of his sleeve. His head is tipped down, his features hidden by the dark fall of his hair; Shizuo can see his shoulders shake with the force of each desperate exhale, can see his whole body rock forward with the effort as if the rush of air in his lungs is more than what’s left of his strength can handle. Shizuo wants to catch his shoulder, wants to brace him still against the force of his coughing; but he doesn’t know if Izaya would let him, and he doesn’t know if he’d hurt the other with just the force of his hold, so he doesn’t, just reaches out to set the glass on the table and wait for the worst of the coughing fit to pass.

It takes a while. Shizuo is left to watch the sag of Izaya’s shirt collar hanging too-loose off his shoulders and the strange, defensive curl of his wrist in against himself like he can physically  hold back the reflexive coughing tearing through him. His eyes are shadowed, heavy with exhaustion printed in blue and purple beneath the angle of his lashes and his mouth raw and chapped from the dehydration his involuntary coughing won’t let him remedy. He looks shattered, looks like his entire self might collapse at too-strong a touch, and Shizuo doesn’t realize he’s clenching his hands together in his lap until Izaya gasps a full breath and lifts his head to stare at them. There’s a pause for a moment, Izaya’s attention caught by the press of Shizuo’s fingers against his hands; then Shizuo lets his grip ease, and Izaya’s head comes up, and the dark of his stare is turned on Shizuo’s face instead.

Shizuo doesn’t know what Izaya sees in his expression. There’s no way to read the color staining Izaya’s eyes; his lashes are damp with tears from the effort of his coughing, his throat still trembling on the desire to continue that he’s fighting back. But he’s staring at Shizuo, his mouth still oddly soft absent the set dislike Shizuo is used to seeing, and when Shizuo opens his mouth to speak it’s sincerity that comes out, “I don’t want you to die” with his voice thrumming so hard in his throat he can feel it cracking over the pauses between the words.

Izaya’s mouth hardens. Shizuo can see it tighten, can see the unusual softness melt away to leave unbending steel in its wake, and he’s not surprised when Izaya replies with “I don’t want your pity,” biting the words off so hard they have a ghostly impression of the way he used to talk, the way he used to throw his words like weapons. Then he turns away, dropping back to the couch and twisting away to face the back rather than letting Shizuo keep looking at his face, and Shizuo is left with just the sharp edges of Izaya’s shoulderblades clinging to the thin of his shirt and the dark of his hair falling heavy against the back of his neck.

Shizuo always thought he hated the laughter in Izaya’s voice, the constant lilting quaver that sounded like mockery, sounded like a giggle threatening his throat with incoherency even as he purred over some new insult to throw in Shizuo’s face. He used to think he’d be happy if he could go the rest of his life never hearing it, if he could walk down the street without the strain of expectation tensing his shoulders against that skidding “Shizu~chan” coming from over his shoulder.

He thinks, now, that he’d give anything to hear Izaya sound that way again.


	14. 20:41

Shizuo wakes to the sound of Izaya coughing.

It’s not as startling as it was that first night. He’s not as deeply asleep, for one thing, and for another the sound of Izaya wheezing for air around fits of coughing has become an odd familiarity over the past few days. This is a bad one -- Shizuo can hear the shudder of desperation laid under each inhale Izaya manages -- but it’s still typical enough that Shizuo doesn’t move for a moment, just lies where he is on the floor behind the couch and listens to Izaya gasping while Shizuo’s mind eases its hold on sleep and resigns itself to consciousness. Then Izaya chokes, his breath hissing in his throat, and Shizuo pushes himself upright and gets to his feet to come around the edge of the couch.

Izaya doesn’t look up at him as he comes into view. His head is dipped down, his shoulders tilted out over the edge of the couch; he has one arm pinned under him, where he clearly rolled over onto it in the first wave of coughing, but the other is thrown out wide, his hand grabbing hard at the edge of the coffee table like he’s trying to hold himself still against the force of air jolting through his lungs. There’s a spill of flowers across the floor that Shizuo can see -- in the nighttime dark of the room, he can’t make out the speckles of color lining the insides of the blossoms. They just look white again, like they were when Shizuo first saw them, and then Izaya shudders and retches, and there’s another spill of blossoms from his lips, and Shizuo steps in closer without waiting for permission.

He doesn’t speak. Izaya can’t answer at the moment anyway, and Shizuo’s not sure that he’s in any state to hear anything coherently either; better to step in close, close enough that Izaya can see him even with his head bowed and his shoulders trembling with the threat of another wave of flowers. Shizuo braces himself against the edge of the table as he kneels alongside the couch, the press of his knees catching and crushing blossoms beneath his weight, and Izaya coughs another handful of flowers as Shizuo reaches out for his shoulder. His fingers catch against fabric, tighten to press against the too-sharp edge of bone under the skin, and Izaya shudders, his whole body trembling like he can’t remember how to hold himself still.

“It’s okay,” Shizuo says, because it’s not but he doesn’t know what else to say, not with the tremors of effort running through Izaya’s wasted frame catching at his fingertips to spill icy horror along his spine. “It’s alright.”

Izaya lifts his hand from the table and reaches out to shove uselessly at Shizuo’s shoulder. “Fuck off,” he says, except he only makes it halfway through the sentence before his fingers tighten and what was intended as rejection inverts to sudden desperation as his head tips forward and he wheezes for a lungful of air. Shizuo reaches out with his other hand, bracketing Izaya’s shoulders in his hold, and Izaya’s entire body convulses as he vomits a rain of flowers into Shizuo’s lap. Izaya’s fingers dig in harder, clutching at Shizuo’s shoulder like he’s trying to keep himself above water, and when the next wave of coughing comes the force of it rocks him so far forward he teeters at the edge of the couch and would fall to the floor were it not for Shizuo’s hold bracing him in place. His head is still ducked down -- Shizuo’s can’t see his eyes or the set of his mouth -- but when he takes an inhale Shizuo can hear the way it catches in the back of his throat like a sob, and he doesn’t try to see what expression is behind the weight of Izaya’s hair. The hold at his shoulder tenses, the fragile weight of Izaya’s too-thin fingers digging in hard against Shizuo’s shirt, and then he falls to another bout of coughing, the motion so strong Shizuo can feel it shuddering along the bone of Izaya’s shoulderblade clear to the touch even under the cover of his shirt. Izaya tips forward, his shoulders pressing hard against Shizuo’s grip even as his fingers curl into a fist of the other’s shirt, and then his forehead lands against Shizuo’s shoulder and he gasps for air, managing an inhale with his mouth so close that Shizuo can feel the rush of heat through the barrier of the fabric.

Shizuo doesn’t pull away. He keeps his hand against Izaya’s shoulder, keeps his hold as steady as he can make it without pressing hard enough to bruise; after a moment he lets his other hand slide up to weight the tremor of Izaya’s back to stillness under the press of his arm. Izaya’s painfully thin -- Shizuo can feel the line of the other’s vertebrae clear against his palm right through the layer of Izaya’s clothes -- but Shizuo doesn’t pull his hand back, and Izaya doesn’t try to resume pushing him away. He just breathes, gasping for air at Shizuo’s shoulder in between bouts of coughing and spills of blossoms; Shizuo can feel Izaya’s arm shaking through the other’s hold at his shoulder, can feel the motion knocking Izaya’s hold loose in spite of the desperate grip he has on the fabric, until when the next full-body shudder comes his fingers come free entirely, his arm sliding sideways until his hand catches at Shizuo’s neck, until the weight of his elbow is digging in hard against Shizuo’s shoulder. His fingers are shaking, his touch unsteady at Shizuo’s collar, but even with the tremors running through him the weight of his thumb against Shizuo’s bare skin is warm, nearly as hot as the gasp of his breathing against the other’s shirt. Shizuo suspects the only reason Izaya isn’t pushing him away is by necessity -- he’d fall off the edge of the couch without the support of Shizuo’s shoulders and the brace of the other’s hold on him -- but he’s not shoving him off, and as long as Shizuo can feel the shattered rhythm of Izaya breathing against his shirt he isn’t going to complain.

He’s just glad Izaya’s still breathing at all.


	15. 11:04

Shizuo wakes up slowly.

It’s a nice change. His sleep has been fractured over the last few days, his unconsciousness broken by startling awake to the sound of Izaya coughing again or struggling for breath so hard his inhales catch and wheeze in his throat. It’s nice to come to alertness slowly with some of the gentle routine Shizuo is more used to, even if he wakes to a crick in his neck and a deep ache all across his shoulders from the way he fell asleep. He’s sitting up, he realizes as he blinks his vision into clarity and squints at the glow of sunlight on the other side of the windows; the edge of the couch behind him has been supporting his weight for the last several hours, and apparently not doing a great deal to help the angle to comfort, judging from the way the back of his neck and head ache. Still, it’s nice to have obtained several hours of uninterrupted sleep, and to wake slowly; and then Shizuo realizes _why_ he woke up so slowly, and twists so fast to look at Izaya his neck cracks and shoots a sharp pain up into his head. He flinches from the hurt, blinking hard past the first rush of white-bright agony, but it’s not enough to more than momentarily distract him from his sudden panic.

It’s unnecessary. Izaya isn’t coughing, and he isn’t audibly struggling for breath like he has been the last two days, but when Shizuo clears his vision from the blur of pain and the panic of adrenaline at the quiet it’s easy to see his shoulders shift with the rhythm of his inhales, easy to see the catch of air against his dry-chapped lips. It’s a relief to see him still breathing. Shizuo can feel the weight of it press against him like a physical presence, and when he breathes out himself it’s as a sigh to carry the tension of needless worry with it. Izaya’s forehead creases, his mouth tenses; but then he shifts by an inch, and eases back against the couch, and slides back into sleep without coming awake.

He doesn’t look peaceful. Shizuo wishes he did; it would be a comfort to see Izaya relax into what help deep sleep could grant him at this point. But Izaya sleeps like he’s ready for a fight, with his shoulders hunched in tight and his knees drawn halfway towards his chest as if to protect himself against some unnamed danger. He has one arm crossed over his chest, his fingers clinging to his far shoulder, and the other draped across his stomach so his arms are forming makeshift armor for his body. It’s an unconscious position, Shizuo can see it is -- the frail line of Izaya’s arms would do nothing to stop any kind of an attack, least of all one begun before he’s come to consciousness. But Izaya’s still curled in around himself like his spine is trying to form a wall against the world, and Shizuo has a moment to wonder if he always sleeps like this, if this is a function of his physical deterioration or just a product of whatever demons exist in his head, if maybe it’s his dreams he’s armoring himself against and not reality.

At least his face is relaxed. The crease of almost-waking that Shizuo’s sigh created is entirely gone; there’s just smooth calm across Izaya’s forehead now, heavy at his eyes and soft at his mouth. He looks exhausted still -- the shadows of insomnia under his eyes have only deepened since Shizuo first arrived, and dehydration has set in so far his lips are cracking to blood from how dry they are -- but with the time to look Shizuo can see other details, too, can see the heavy line of Izaya’s lashes framing his eyes with saturated black and can follow the sharp edges of cheekbones too-close under the skin from how thin he’s become. His lips are chapped pale and cracked to red, but underneath that Shizuo can see the shape of his mouth, can see the curve of his lips gone softer and sweeter with the relaxation that comes with unconsciousness. He looks different, when he’s not fighting for a glare or crackling through a laugh; looking at him now, with his features fallen into the neutrality of sleep, Shizuo can see the beauty in them even under the bruised-in exhaustion and the wasted hollows of his cheeks. It’s strange to see, strange to recognize the objective attractiveness of the face he has spent years of his life hating with all his heart; he can feel the thought creeping out into his awareness and spreading to cast everything in his experience in a different light. He can call up the cut of Izaya’s smile as it was, the sharp edges of his mocking laugh and the tilt of his wrist as he braced his hold on his knife in uncounted fights; but there’s not just anger to the memories, now, not just the usual burn of irritation and confusion in Shizuo’s chest. There’s a warmth, too, an odd, breathless ache that stutters his breathing and catches in his throat, anger converting to nostalgia as it trails the weight of Izaya’s lashes against his cheek. Shizuo can feel the pressure against his ribcage, can feel the knot in the back of his throat like tears, and when he reaches out for Izaya’s hair it’s with a frown on his face, with his mouth drawn down and his forehead creasing against the burn behind his eyes and the pressure in his throat. His fingers catch against the dark of the strands to urge them back and away from Izaya’s features, and he hadn’t intended to touch the other’s skin but his fingers glance against Izaya’s cheek, his thumb bumps the other’s forehead as he pushes dark hair away from pale features. Izaya’s forehead creases, his arm shifts, and when he moves it’s to let his shoulder go, to uncurl some of the tension hunching forward along his spine. Shizuo can see the calm unwind along Izaya’s shoulders, can see his position ease into relaxation instead of self-defense, and he doesn’t pull his hand away; he leaves it where it is, his fingers catching against the dark of Izaya’s hair to hold it back from his face while his thumb strokes across the strands as gently as he can manage. Izaya whimpers something, a sound far back in his throat, and stirs, turning to lift his head towards the weight of Shizuo’s touch. Shizuo’s palm presses against a sharp-edged jawline, his thumb slides against the high arch of cheekbone, and Izaya’s mouth twitches, the corner of it turning up into something like a smile before he blinks his eyes open.

It takes a moment for his vision to steady. Shizuo can see the haze of distraction over the dark crimson of Izaya’s eyes, can see the effort that comes with the shift of his lashes as he blinks. His smile fades as he comes awake, his mouth easing into flatline confusion; a line creases his forehead, then evaporates as his gaze wanders across Shizuo’s face, as his blurred vision pieces together the other’s features. Shizuo can see the exact moment recognition hits; it’s in the shift of Izaya’s lashes as his eyes go wider for a brief moment of shock, and it’s laid along his jaw in tension suddenly straining under the weight of Shizuo’s touch.

“What--” Izaya starts, and Shizuo starts to pull away, awareness finally catching up to draw his touch back from Izaya’s skin as if he’s been burned. He’s expecting a razor-edged protest, expecting a vicious dig of words and vitriol; but Izaya’s voice cuts off into sudden silence, and when Shizuo blinks at him Izaya’s eyes are wide on horror instead of anger. His throat works, his mouth opens on silence; and then he coughs, an awful, broken sound like he’s tearing his throat open, and when he turns his head he doesn’t have time to lift a hand to catch the flood of blossoms that spill from his mouth. He’s shaking all through his body, his shoulders jolting with the force of his coughing, and for a moment Shizuo doesn’t even notice the flowers themselves for the horrified panic that hits him. His hand lands at Izaya’s shoulders, presses down against the shuddering motion there to hold him still, but it’s not enough; Izaya’s still shaking, his entire body quivering in helpless spasms as he coughs an endless wave of flowers onto the couch, the dark petals catching at each other to spill over the edge and into Shizuo’s lap. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his hands starting to shake with panicked adrenaline as Izaya keeps coughing desperate, hacking lungfuls of air; and it’s then that he sees the purple of the flower petals, the way they’re arranged to radiate out from the central point instead of tapering into a bell shape, and he can feel chill run all down his spine like a premonition of some horrible future.

He had thought the foxglove was the worst of it. From the way Izaya is quivering under his hands and the rasping desperation of breathing in his throat, Shizuo has a terrible certainty that he was wrong about that too.


	16. 06:12

“ _Please_.” Shizuo can hear his voice cracking on the word, can feel the desperate need under it dragging rough against the back of his throat, but he can’t smooth it out even if he had the energy to make the attempt. He braces his elbow against the kitchen counter, leans forward to rest his forehead hard against his hand. “He needs your help, Shinra, he’s only gotten worse since this morning.”

“I told you that you should leave,” Shinra reminds him, sounding unreasonably chipper about the statement. Usually Shizuo would forgive him for it, would be willing to wave it off as an unchangeable part of Shinra’s personality; right now, with Izaya shuddering on the couch and gasping from his latest bout of coughing, it sets irritation hunching in his shoulders and clenching at his jaw. “You’re only serving as a reminder of the cause of the problem in the first place. Though I didn’t expect the flower to change. What kind is it?”

Shizuo shuts his eyes and breathes hard through his nose against the frustration rising to heat in his chest. It will do no good at all if he crushes his phone right now; that will just leave him as truly useless as he feels, absent the connection to anyone outside the room that has rapidly become his entire existence. “I don’t _know_ , why does it matter? He’s gotten worse, why should it make a difference why?”

“The symptoms will change if it’s a different kind of poison,” Shinra says calmly, and Shizuo opens his eyes again to stare blank horror at the purple flowers scattered across the floor and the edge of the couch where Izaya is currently shivering exhaustion. “Or go away, if it’s not, but if he’s gotten worse as you say he has it’s more likely this new flower is more toxic even than the foxglove.”

“Purple,” Shizuo says, hearing his voice go hoarse in his throat. “They’re purple, with yellow centers, and the petals spread open around them.”

“Hm.” Shinra sounds abstracted; Shizuo can hear the sound of movement on the other end of the line, the tap of a keyboard as the other types something. “How many petals?”

“Six.” Izaya stirs on the couch, twisting to roll onto his side instead of his back; the movement leaves his arm angled up in front of his face, lets his fingers catch at the arm of the couch like he’s bracing himself before gravity gets the better of him and his hand drops to passivity against the cushion. He still doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t show the least sign of listening to Shizuo’s conversation.

“Mm.” Shinra’s humming on the other end of the phone, murmuring something under his breath as he clicks through whatever it is he’s considering; Shizuo waits, watching Izaya breathe against the couch and feeling his heart race with fear and the last desperate attempt at hope, at the possibility that whatever these are they’re harmless, or at least less dangerous than the foxglove, that they’re something that will give him enough time to find a solution to the problem that’s been growing heavier in his mind with each of Izaya’s straining inhales.

Finally: “Ah!” bright and sudden, and Shizuo straightens from the counter, his attention diverting entirely to the sound of Shinra’s voice on the other side of the line. “I found it. Do they have soft stems and petals, fuzzy on the outside?”

“Yes,” Shizuo says. His fingers tense against the counter, his knuckles going white on strain. “What is it? What does it do?”

“It’s pasqueflower.” Shinra sounds delighted, pleased to have found the information, but Shizuo doesn’t let his hold on the edge of the counter free. “Sometimes called Easter flower or meadow anemone.”

“Oh,” Shizuo says. His fingers ease, the strain in his wrist loosens. “That sounds pretty.”

Shinra’s laugh is bright. “Oh yes, it’s a pretty flower and a pretty name! And it’s very poisonous, far worse than the foxglove.” Shizuo’s hand seizes on the counter. There’s the sound of something cracking under his hold, but he doesn’t look down to see what it is; his whole attention is pinned to the easy lilt of Shinra’s voice on the other end of the line. “It’s very bitter, it would be hard to make yourself eat any of it at all deliberately, but if he’s coughing it up himself I can’t imagine he’ll be able to survive more than a few hours, especially given his physical state when I last saw him.”

“Fuck,” Shizuo breathes.

“It causes convulsions, vomiting, and a slowed heartbeat,” Shinra goes on. “If he’s coughing it up in the quantities you describe he won’t last the night.” He says it simply, a statement of fact so stripped of emotional tone that Shizuo can’t even reach for the comfort of thinking he might be exaggerating for the purposes of some unknown cruelty. “Sure you don’t want to leave?”

“I’m not leaving,” Shizuo says, even though his heart is pounding, even though his fingers are crushing dust out of the tile of Izaya’s counter. “I’m not going to leave him alone.”

“Your dedication is admirable,” Shinra says without any suggestion of sarcasm in his tone. “Especially for someone you hate.”

“I don’t hate him,” Shizuo says, and for all the strength in his fingers there’s none in his voice, nothing he can find for the sincerity of the statement but exhaustion. “I don’t hate him.”

“Mm.” Shinra sounds considering, like he might be mustering the leading edge of sympathy through sheer concentration. “It’s not going to be pleasant.”

Shizuo knows it’s true. There’s fear in his chest, spreading chill running all through his body like winter has arrived early to freeze his blood as it beats in his heart; it’s too easy, with how still Izaya is lying, to imagine the hissing effort of his breathing falling silent, too easy to imagine the last color still clinging desperately to his lips fading to the blue-white of death. Shizuo’s throat knots, his eyes burn, and for a moment his shoulders hunch over the counter, his head dropping down while he makes the effort to breathe clarity past the threat of tears in his throat.

“What,” he manages, and his voice is cracking, his tone quivering in a way he can’t remember it breaking since he was a child too young to hold back tears at an injury. “What does it mean? The flower?”

“‘You have no claims,’” Shinra says immediately. “He has something he thinks he doesn’t deserve.”

Shizuo shuts his eyes. He can feel his lashes going heavy with damp. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.” There’s a gasp from the couch, a sudden struggle for air, and he lifts his head all at once, the effort of holding back emotion completely forgotten in sudden panic as Izaya shudders and twists on the couch to turn his head sideways as he starts coughing again.

“Shit,” Shizuo says, “I have to go” and he’s going, tapping against the phone and dropping it to the counter without checking to make sure he actually managed to hang up the call. It’s not important, not compared to the full-body tremors wracking Izaya through his desperate coughing. Shizuo makes it to the couch just as the first flowers start to fall from Izaya’s lips, gets his hands against the other’s shoulders to draw him up and clear of the couch so he’s leaning over the edge instead of choking on the weight of the flowers on his tongue. Izaya doesn’t resist any more than he attempts to help; he’s just passive, a limp weight for Shizuo to pull over the couch as he kneels alongside it, as he draws Izaya forward to support the other’s head against his shoulder so Izaya can cough flowers into his lap instead of over the couch in front of him. It’s hard to listen to him coughing, hard to feel the convulsive shudders running through him with each burst of air in his lungs; but with the beat of his heart feeling like a countdown, all Shizuo can do is offer what useless support he can.

He has to try, regardless of what Izaya thinks he deserves.


	17. 00:00

Izaya’s hands are cold.

It’s a strange thing to realize, Shizuo thinks somewhere in the hazy blur of his exhausted thoughts. It was only the day before that he could feel Izaya’s touch like fire on his skin, like the other’s fingerprints were a brand at the back of his neck; but that was yesterday, and now it’s today, and today Izaya’s hands are so cold it’s only the rasp of his breathing that’s letting Shizuo know he’s still holding onto life at all. There’s no strength in his fingers, no effort in the passive curl of his hand; he hasn’t moved it at all for the last hour since Shizuo gave up on any attempts at calling Shinra’s long-since turned off cell phone and sat next to the couch to press his fingers against Izaya’s heartbeat thudding dully in his wrist. Izaya didn’t shift at the contact, didn’t snatch his hand away or even open his eyes to stare at Shizuo; he just let it happen, let Shizuo’s hold wrap in against his wrist, and he hasn’t reacted since, even when Shizuo kept holding onto him instead of drawing his hand away. The feel of the other’s pulse is less a comfort than it should be; it’s there, at least, which is better than the alternative, but Shizuo is trying to not count the seconds because he’s sure it’s coming more slowly with each passing breath, he can feel the rhythm fracture and stumble every few minutes as Izaya shudders with the effort of living, struggles through the basic requirements of existence with Shizuo able to do nothing except feel his heartbeat thud slower and slower in his wrist.

Shizuo doesn’t cry. He doesn’t think he could, doesn’t know if he remembers how; he feels cold all through himself, like his blood has turned to ice to match the awful chill creeping deeper under Izaya’s skin with each barely-there heartbeat. It might be a relief, he thinks very distantly, to have the outlet of tears hot behind his eyes; but there’s no relief, just the tension and the waiting for a conclusion Shizuo would do anything to prevent.

He’s not thinking about anything at all. It’s better that way, safer that way; he can think of nothing but the obvious, and that is too unbearable to linger on for any length of time. So Shizuo’s just sitting still, his fingers locked into an unbreakable hold on Izaya’s wrist that he’s long since forgotten how to undo and his gaze trained unseeing on the far wall of the apartment, when Izaya takes a sudden, choking inhale next to him. Shizuo turns immediately, the tension in him snapping to action in the space between one heartbeat and another; he’s expecting another spill of flowers, another hacking attempt at breathing to result in a rain of the pasqueflowers scattered across the couch and the floor and the table all three. But Izaya’s not coughing; he’s staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide and mouth open, and then he shudders so violently that Shizuo can feel the horror of it like ice down his spine.

“Izaya,” he says, and he’s letting the other’s wrist go now, reaching out for his shoulders as he comes up onto his knees in a burst of instinctive reaction, but the force of his hold isn’t enough to stall out the movement. Izaya’s still shaking, his body jerking with convulsive tremors too abrupt to be intentional, and even when Shizuo leans in over him his eyes don’t focus, his vision doesn’t track the other’s face. He’s hissing for breath, his mouth open on a desperate attempt at air, and Shizuo can hear the strain rattling against his throat, can feel the horror of the sound like a knife in his chest.

“ _Shit_ ,” he blurts, and “ _Izaya_ ,” desperately, now, but Izaya’s just quivering in his hold, his chest straining so hard for air that Shizuo can see the motion even through the other’s dark shirt. Izaya coughs once, managing something approximating his usual hacking exhale, but when he turns his head the flower catches at his lips, the minimal weight of it too much for his pained breathing to knock loose. Shizuo pulls him sideways, tipping Izaya onto his side so the blossom falls free, but it doesn’t help; Izaya’s still shuddering, his body quaking through movement so involuntary that Shizuo doesn’t need to be told to recognize the last desperate attempts at life.

“Don’t,” he says, as if that will help, as if Izaya has any conscious control over the uncoordinated reflex shaking through him. “Stop, _stop_ , Izaya, you can’t die, you _can’t die_.”

“Shizu--” Izaya chokes, and his eyes are still unfocused but he’s reaching out with one hand to make a desperate attempt at motion. Shizuo isn’t sure what he’s trying to do, if it’s to touch Shizuo’s face or grab at his shoulder or shove against his chest, but what happens is Izaya’s fingertips catch at his neck, drag chill for a moment across his skin, and then fall away to hang limp over the edge of the couch as he rattles another inhale.

“You can’t,” Shizuo says again, and his vision is going blurry and whatever chill was in him before is gone, now, his whole body has gone desperately hot with panic and there’s no relief in it at all. His cheeks are wet, his voice is catching, but he’s still holding to Izaya’s shoulders, still bracing him in place like stalling the involuntary motion of failing life will somehow keep death away for a minute, a second, a heartbeat longer. Izaya chokes on an inhale, his throat working on the air, and Shizuo’s breathing catches in his throat to match, his lungs flexing too hard on oxygen until he doesn’t know what to do with it. “I love you, Izaya, I love you too, don’t die.”

Izaya whimpers, a tiny frail sound of protest, and his eyes fall shut, the shadow-dark color of them disappearing behind the weight of his lashes. Shizuo’s chest seizes, his mind hisses _you’ll never see his eyes again_ , and it’s desperation that brings his hands to Izaya’s face to catch the weight of the other’s head between his palms and turn it up to face him.

“ _Izaya_ ,” Shizuo demands, his voice scraping raw in his throat. “Look at me, _fuck_ , Izaya _open your eyes_.” Izaya shudders and coughs weakly in the back of his throat; Shizuo’s fingers tighten, his hold ruffling through the dark of Izaya’s hair. “ _Look at me_.”

Izaya’s mouth twitches, the corner of his lips tugging up for just a moment. “So demanding, Shizu-ch--” he starts, but then a cough catches him, his whole body shaking violently under Shizuo’s hold on him. It’s a pair of flowers, this time, their purple petals caught together as they fall past Izaya’s lips, but Shizuo barely sees them, because Izaya’s opening his eyes to blink unfocus at Shizuo from under the half-lidded weight of his lashes.

“Don’t die,” Shizuo repeats. “I love you, you _can’t_ die, I won’t let you.”

Izaya shudders a sound, a faint helpless whimper of noise as his lashes start to slide shut again. “You don’t,” he manages, the words hissing around the obstruction rising in his throat again. “Pity isn’t--”

“It’s _not pity_ ,” Shizuo growls, and then he leans in and crushes his mouth to Izaya’s.

He tastes like poison. There’s bitter on Izaya’s lips, catching and bleeding to fill Shizuo’s mouth with tongue-curling bitterness until he can’t even taste the metallic tang of blood from the other’s cracked lips. Izaya’s mouth is dry with dehydration, his lips cooler than they have any right to be, and Shizuo’s body protests the taste of him, tries to stage an instinctive retreat from the bitter of death clinging to the other’s mouth. Shizuo falls back by an inch, gasping a startled breath of air, and it’s only then that he realizes Izaya’s hand is at his shoulder, the weight of the other’s shove so weak Shizuo didn’t even feel it over the adrenaline-stoked pounding of his heart.

“Stop,” Izaya says, and he coughs, his throat struggling on the weight of another flower. “ _Stop_.”

“I’m not going to let you die,” Shizuo tells him, and he leans back in again, bracing Izaya still as he presses his lips back against the awful bitter coating the other’s mouth. His instinct rebels, reflex tells him to retreat, and he ignores both, ignores everything in his head screaming at him to pull back and away from the poison on Izaya’s skin. He holds tighter instead, clinging to Izaya like he can keep him alive by physical force, and then he presses closer to lick past the dry catch of Izaya’s lips and his whole body shudders protest, his tongue twisting in an attempt to break free of the bitter saturating the inside of Izaya’s mouth. There’s still a hand at Shizuo’s shoulder but Shizuo isn’t sure if it’s to push him away or pull him closer, isn’t sure Izaya knows any more than he does, and then Izaya coughs, a reflexive burst of sound, and Shizuo can feel the soft of flower petals hit his tongue. He pulls back, just for a moment to spit the flower free of his mouth, and Izaya’s hand pushes at his neck, fingers like ice trembling against his skin.

“Stop,” Izaya gasps, and Shizuo can’t tell if he’s crying or if he’s suffocating or if it’s just the fragile pace of his heart giving way that’s making him shake like he is, that’s sending his whole body into helpless, convulsive twitching against the couch. “It’s poison, you’ll…” A whole-body tremor, his back arching to throw him forward off the couch for a moment, and Shizuo grabs at Izaya’s hip, closing his fingers on skin stretched too-tight over bone to hold the other still. “ _Die_ ,” Izaya chokes off, and then he’s retching again, his breathing cutting off into another spill of flowers past his lips and over the bracing angle of Shizuo’s wrist under his head.

“You _won’t_ ,” Shizuo insists, his heart racing and his mouth filled with the taste of Izaya’s poisonous love. “I won’t let you” and he leans back in again, catching Izaya’s mouth with his to press another kiss against those chapped lips. It’s worse, now, the bitterness brighter and sharper with the weight of the flowers, and Shizuo can taste the petals, can feel the soft of the stems against his tongue and catching at his lips, but he doesn’t pull away again except to spit the flowers free and come back in for more. Izaya’s shaking under him, his fingers sliding free of Shizuo’s neck to be caught in the space between their bodies, and Shizuo can’t tell if he’s breathing anymore, can’t tell if it’s rising panic or the last dregs of life that are quaking their way through Izaya’s frail body, and he can’t pull away to check, can’t risk losing even a second of contact with the toxic friction of the other’s mouth. He’s holding Izaya against him, catching poison on his tongue as his heart pounds out a desperate rhythm; and then Izaya shudders, a single full-body tremor, and goes so absolutely still that Shizuo’s blood chills with terrified premonition.

It takes him a moment to pull away. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, every action demanding absolute focus; Shizuo can feel his heart racing in his chest, the pace of it surging to frantic horror as he draws back to spit out a last mouthful of poison-bitter blossoms, as he blinks hard to try to bring his shaky vision into focus on Izaya’s mouth, throat, chest, anything to give an indication of the other’s continued survival. He can’t see straight, he can’t think; his hand at Izaya’s cheek eases, his fingers dragging across too-pale skin with too-late gentleness while he tries to find the words for what he wants to say. Finally it’s simple, just one word, as soft as it has ever come to his lips: “Izaya?”

Izaya’s lashes shift. For a moment Shizuo thinks he’s imagined it; but then Izaya opens his eyes, and blinks, and then he’s looking up at Shizuo, and he’s breathing more easily than the other has heard in days, and everything in Shizuo shudders into an exhausted tremor of relief too overwhelming to be borne.

“Izaya,” he says again, and he’s letting the other’s hip go and reaching to frame Izaya’s face between his palms again. “I thought you were--”

Izaya blinks again. “Shizu-chan,” he rasps, his voice still wrecked even if his breathing is easier; and then his expression crumples, his whole face collapsing into emotion so suddenly Shizuo is still gaping at him when Izaya turns his face down and chokes out a broken sob against the couch. His hand comes back up, his fingers dragging weakly across Shizuo’s shoulder, and this time Shizuo doesn’t even try to figure out what he means. He just pulls him closer, drawing Izaya’s minimal weight over the cushions and off the couch to catch the other in his lap, and Izaya leans in as he comes, angling the barely-there weight of his arm around Shizuo’s neck while he presses his forehead to the other’s shoulder and wails the most heartwrenching sobs Shizuo has ever heard into his shirt. He’s shuddering again, his shoulders quaking with the force of his tears; but when Shizuo pulls him in against his chest Izaya gets both arms looped around his neck, and twists in to press against his body, and when Shizuo wraps his arms around the other’s shaking shoulders he finds he can still the worst of the tremors into mild shaking instead of the full-body convulsions they are trying to be.

Even with the hiccuping sobs in his throat, the sound of Izaya’s breathing is the most beautiful thing Shizuo has ever heard.


	18. -00:54

Shizuo doesn’t know how long they stay like that. His heart is racing on panic-turned-relief, the sudden cessation of tension leaving him trembling all through his body in spite of the weight of Izaya in his lap, and if he’s blinking back his own tears Izaya is sobbing hard enough for them both, choking awful choking waves of emotion into Shizuo’s shoulder until the fabric is wet through and clinging damp to Shizuo’s skin. Shizuo doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything; he just keeps his hold on Izaya’s shaking shoulders, and braces his arm around the other’s body, and lets the other cry helplessly against him. Izaya has a hand up against Shizuo’s hair, his fingertips catching and tightening on the strands; Shizuo can feel the convulsive waves of tears in the grip of Izaya’s hold, can feel the more gentle drag of contact go into a bracing fist in the moment before Izaya gasps the dragging inhale that’s the precursor to another round of crying. It feels like forever before Izaya’s desperate sobs give way to hiccuping breathing; he doesn’t lift his head from Shizuo’s shoulder, doesn’t loosen his grip around the other’s neck, and Shizuo doesn’t try to pull him back and doesn’t ease his own hold either. He can’t see Izaya’s face like this but he doesn’t need to; it’s enough to have the rhythm of the other’s breathing coming warm against the collar of his shirt, enough that Izaya is close enough Shizuo can hear the continued sound of his inhales. Even after the sobs have faded and Izaya’s hold starts to fall into the slack weight of unconsciousness Shizuo doesn’t try to move him; he stays right where he is, with one leg going numb from the pressure of Izaya in his lap, and his shoulder aching from the uncomfortable weight of Izaya’s head resting against it, and Izaya’s whole body going heavy in his arms as the other slides into sleep.

Shizuo doesn’t shift. He had been tired before, drowsing with the weight of exhaustion built up over the stress and discomfort of the last few days, and it would be easy to tip his head back or slide his weight down by an inch to lean against the couch behind him and let himself sleep as well. But the demand for sleep has eased at least temporarily to the demands of the adrenaline that so gripped him for those few minutes of horror, and even if it seems the worst has passed the painful fragility of Izaya’s body under his arms is enough reason to get more immediate medical attention than Shizuo is capable of offering himself. He should have called Shinra right away, he knows; but Izaya was crying, and Shizuo didn’t want to let him go, and even now he doesn’t want to pull away from the reassurance of Izaya’s breathing falling warm against his skin. So he waits instead, listening to the sound of Izaya’s tear-tense inhales easing into the slow rhythm of sleep as the strain in his body surrenders to unconsciousness, and it’s only after Izaya’s been utterly still for nearly five minutes that Shizuo unwinds one arm and shifts imperceptibly so he can slide his phone free of his pocket.

He wonders, as he listens to the electronic crackle of the phone ringing, if Shinra will still have his cell powered off, if he should take Izaya to the hospital directly if Shinra doesn’t pick up; but then there’s a _click_ , and Shinra chirps “Shizuo!” into the phone with as much delight as if he hadn’t hung up on the other a few hours earlier. “It’s late, how are things?”

“Good,” Shizuo says immediately. “Better. I need you to come out to Shinjuku.”

“Right now?” Shinra asks. “Celty was about to start making dinner for me.”

“Right now,” Shizuo says. “Izaya needs your help.”

“Shizuo,” Shinra sighs heavily into the phone. “I’ve been telling you. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can--”

“He’s not dying,” Shizuo says, cutting off the protest he’s heard repeated so many times today he could recite it back himself. “The flowers stopped.”

There’s a beat of complete silence. “What?”

“He stopped coughing flowers. He’s not poisoning himself anymore.” Shizuo’s hold around Izaya’s shoulders tightens involuntarily, his fingers catching at the other’s shoulder to press him in closer, but Izaya doesn’t so much as frown in his sleep. “But he’s dehydrated and he hasn’t eaten anything in days. He needs a doctor.”

Shinra laughs bright on the other end of the phone. “I can help with that.” There’s a pause, a murmur of sound too soft for Shizuo to make out; then “Thank you, darling!” as Shinra brings the phone back to his mouth. “Celty will bring me over as soon as I have some things together. He’s not vomiting flowers at all?”

“No.” Shizuo tips his head barely to the side to glance at the dark of Izaya’s hair against his shoulder. “No, that’s stopped completely.”

“Hm.” There’s a weight under the sound, a note of suspicion that Shizuo can hear purr under Shinra’s voice; but whatever he may be wondering he leaves unsaid, falling back instead on “That’s fantastic news.” Another pause, the low murmur of “Not that, bring those instead” as Shinra corrects Celty in something; then clearly, directed to Shizuo again: “Is he conscious? Is his breathing steady? How is his pulse?”

“He’s asleep, I think,” Shizuo says. “He’s breathing fine. Hang on.” He pulls the phone away, stretches out to set it on the table while Shinra resumes speaking to Celty; at a distance the sound from the speaker fades to a faint crackle of static, the chirp of Shinra’s voice falls to background noise for the soft hiss of Izaya’s inhales. Shizuo turns his head down to see the angle of Izaya’s head against him, to see the tilt of the other’s shoulders as he slumps against the support of Shizuo’s chest; Izaya doesn’t move, his lashes not so much as fluttering even with the disruption of Shizuo’s phone call. Shizuo lifts his hand to Izaya’s shoulder, his fingers trailing against the sharp-edged line of the other’s collarbone and up to the curve of his throat, and then he’s fitting his thumb against Izaya’s neck to find out the rhythm of his heartbeat. It takes him a moment to locate it, a breath of time to settle his fingers gently against the line of Izaya’s throat; but then it’s there, a slow rhythm thudding against his touch like it’s rising to meet the contact, and Shizuo doesn’t have to count time to feel the difference between the failing desperation of earlier and the steady thud of the rhythm now. He keeps his hand there for a moment longer than he needs, just to feel the dregs of panic in his own veins ease with the comfort of the even heartbeat; and then he draws his hand away carefully, and reaches back out for his phone as he blinks hard to clear his vision again.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice is rough with emotion he can’t quite clear. “His pulse is fine.”

“That’s great,” Shinra says, as easily as if he was expecting this answer. “I’ll head over there now and we’ll be there soon. Are you going to stay with him?”

Shizuo knows Shinra just means for the evening. It’s an innocent question, a matter of logistics rather than commitment. But his eyes are still burning with tears he can’t quite hold back, and Izaya is breathing warmth against the collar of his shirt and holding desperately tight to him even in his sleep, and Shizuo can feel the weight of his answer like a promise on his tongue, the words no less sincere for his lack of an understanding audience.

“Yeah,” he says, and shuts his eyes to the surge of heat that presses painful relief against the inside of his chest. “I’m going to stay with him.”


	19. -60:07

Recovery is a slow process.

Shinra shows up that first night, armed with needles and syringes that neither Shizuo nor Izaya look at too closely. Izaya stirs back awake during the necessary transition of moving him to the couch so Shinra can fit him with an IV drip, but he doesn’t manage anything coherent beyond a frown at the press of the needle and a incoherent grumble when Shizuo’s hold at his shoulder keeps him from rolling away to tuck himself against the back of the couch. Izaya’s only awake for a few minutes; he’s drifted back into unconsciousness by the time Shinra has the saline drip going with Celty to hold the bag before the frame for it is set up, the tension of discomfort in his expression easing back to slack weight as his shoulders relax to leave him sprawling boneless across the couch.

 _He looks terrible_ , Celty offers at some point, when Shizuo looks away from what inexplicable things Shinra is doing to see her holding her phone screen out to him to read. Even without an expression to read her reaction from, Shizuo can see sympathy in the slump of her shoulders, in the forward tilt of her helmet like she’s bowing a nonexistent head. It takes him a moment to respond, a few seconds to parse together the objective truth of “Yeah” into something sincere on his tongue. Izaya _does_ look terrible, with his eyes shadowed on insomnia and his lips cracked to dark-clotted blood; when Shizuo looks at the line of his arm bared for the IV by a pushed-up sleeve, he can see the angle of bone under skin up the whole length of it, can see the definition of tendons clear in the limp angle of Izaya’s wrist hanging over the edge of the couch. But he’s breathing, and his lips are parted on a rhythm easier than any Shizuo has heard for days, and Shizuo thinks the rise and fall of the other’s chest as he sleeps is the best thing he’s ever seen.

Shizuo sleeps too, eventually. Shinra shoos him out after a few hours with some half-formed excuse of Shizuo’s hovering being a distraction; it’s not a very convincing argument, not when Shizuo has been fending off increasingly concerned suggestions from Celty that he get some rest of his own and when he knows Shinra’s argument is more for her behalf than his, but with Izaya asleep and showing no signs of waking any time soon the siren call of too-long delayed rest is more than Shizuo can resist. Celty refuses to let him sleep against the back of the couch, as habit and worry suggest he should; in the end she’s the one who tracks down Izaya’s bedroom and urges Shizuo into it with an insistence more charming than frustrating. Shizuo doesn’t look around the room -- there’s not much there, in the first place, and it feels wrong to poke through it without Izaya there to give permission -- but he does take the bed, stumbling forward on exhaustion-heavy steps until he can fall face-first over the sheets. The mattress is too soft, he thinks when he lands, giving in all the wrong places for Shizuo’s expectations, and the sheets are too clean, drawn into neat lines across the bed as if it’s never been used by anyone until now. The pillows have silk-slick covers on them, the fabric too glossy for comfort; but then Shizuo pushes them aside, and finds another set underneath, softer and warmer than the others even if they haven’t been touched in days. They smell like Izaya when he presses his face against them, the weight of them clinging to the scent of the other’s hair and skin in spite of his extended absence from the bed itself, and it should spark familiar anger in Shizuo’s chest but he just aches for it instead, just presses his face against the pillows and shoves at the blankets like he can get closer to the afterimage of Izaya’s presence if he tries. Eventually he ends up tangled under Izaya’s sheets, and with his head pressed to Izaya’s pillow, and he’s dreaming before he realizes, memories of past fights gone uncannily gentle in his unconscious mind to give him Izaya’s skin under his hands, Izaya’s breathing against his lips, Izaya’s fingers in his hair. The dreams overwhelm him, hold him down to unconsciousness for a span of solid hours, and by the time he startles awake it’s hard to unfasten the connections between fantasy and reality enough even to remember where he is.

Celty’s gone when Shizuo emerges to find the day fading out to the beginnings of sunset on the other side of the glass windows. Shinra is still there, and so is Izaya, talking together in low voices that cut off abruptly as soon as Shizuo emerges from the hallway. Izaya blinks at Shizuo from across the room, his eyes dark and endless as the night falling over the city, and Shinra starts talking immediately, chirping directions rapidly as he gets to his feet. There are a dozen things to worry about -- the angle of the needle in Izaya’s arm, and keeping the bag of saline up over his head, and not letting him sit up for another day, and what to feed him and when -- and Shinra rattles it all off rapidfire, moving so quickly it’s not until he’s heading for the door that Shizuo realizes these are all things he’s meant to do on his own. By then it’s too late to more than blink, and maybe open his mouth for a protest, and then “Good luck, call me if he dies!” and Shinra’s gone before Shizuo can put words to the slow-rising panic in his chest.

He stares at the door for a long moment. His phone is in his pocket, Shinra’s number promising a quick answer; he could call him back, could demand written instructions or the support of someone who knows what he’s doing, could insist that he’s likely to do more harm than good himself. But then he looks back, and Izaya’s still watching him, and all of Shizuo’s panic goes as silent as the rest of the thoughts in his head.

Neither of them speak for a minute. Izaya doesn’t look like he wants to and Shizuo doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he could trust his voice to manage speech even if he knew what words to put to the strange combination of apology and concern and relief knotting tight at the very top of his ribcage. He can feel his expression going tense, can feel his forehead creasing on stress as his eyes burn with too-much emotion; and then Izaya blinks, and his mouth quirks into a smile, and he says “I’m thirsty, Shizu-chan,” with as much command on the comment as if he’s a king on a throne. “Get me some water.”

Shizuo stares at him for a moment, stares at the dark of his eyes and the curve of his lips and the tilt of his head against the pillow under him, all the little details of mannerism that he’s seen flicker and fade over the last days as illness won out over personality. Then he ducks his head, and huffs a laugh, and says “Okay” and goes to get the water without protest. By the time he returns he’s swallowed back the threat of tears, has drawn himself into the appearance of composure enough that even Izaya’s shaky efforts to push himself to upright don’t faze him except to get an arm under the other’s shoulders to hold him steady while he manages the water himself. Izaya doesn’t comment on Shizuo’s support, and Shizuo doesn’t comment on the tension in Izaya’s fingers as he holds the glass, and as soon as Izaya’s swallowed half the liquid he pushes the glass back into Shizuo’s hand and demands that the other get him a clean shirt to change into.

That’s how it starts, and that’s how it continues. Tom calls on the second day of recovery; Shizuo explains that he’s dealing with a personal crisis and pleads off another week of work while Izaya stares at him from the couch with those dark eyes and the tension of maybe-a-smile pressing against his chapped lips. Namie returns after her day off, vocal in her surprise that Izaya is still alive and bearing groceries that lean so heavily towards nursing an invalid back to health that Shizuo suspects Shinra to have passed on more information that he let on. She refuses to do the nursing herself, as insistent on this point now as ever, and while she and Izaya are bickering Shizuo makes a pot of soup and brings a bowl over for Izaya to work through. Namie raises an eyebrow at him, suspicion clear all over her face; but she doesn’t comment, and for once neither does Izaya. He just lets Shizuo help him to sit upright against the arm of the couch, and accepts the soup without protest, and promptly launches into some other subject of complaint while Namie rolls her eyes and snaps back at him without the least appearance of concern for his current physical state. She stays all afternoon, finally leaving with a groan about it being useless to return the next day since Izaya’s finally managed to find someone masochistic enough to put up with his presence, but she leaves the groceries without demanding payment, and she leaves Izaya smiling wide enough that the bright of it lingers in his eyes as the sun starts to creep back down towards the city skyline. Shizuo doesn’t linger to watch; it’s more than he can quite stand, to see the bright of Izaya’s smile casting shadows across the exhausted lines of his face, so he goes back to the kitchen to rummage through the cupboards again and heat up the leftovers of the soup in hopes of getting Izaya to eat more before he drifts back into sleep. It’s a soothing process, simple and straightforward enough that Shizuo doesn’t have to think about anything at all as he works, and by the time it’s done the light outside is fading to grey, the last radiant lines of the sunset across the sky easing into the simpler monochrome of night.

Izaya’s not looking at Shizuo as he approaches; he’s staring out the window, one arm angled across his stomach and the other resting wrist-up at his side to allow space for the needle linking him to the bag of saline set up at the end of the couch. It’s nearly the last one; by the morning all the supplies Shinra left will be gone and they’ll be back to wholly ordinary means of sustenance and hydration. Izaya looks better already than he did; his lips are nearly healed from the dry-cracked lines of pain that marked them before, and there’s a suggestion of color in his cheeks again, the shading of it visible even with the dim lighting from the setting sun.

“Here.” Shizuo sets the bowl of soup down at the edge of the table, replacing the empty one from earlier as he moves to kneel alongside the couch; Izaya blinks and turns his head to look at the bowl rather than at Shizuo next to him. There’s a lock of hair falling just in front of his eyes, the dark of it so close it catches his lashes when he blinks. “You should eat again, if you can.”

“Yeah,” Izaya says, but he sounds distracted; he’s still staring at the bowl but he doesn’t look like he’s seeing it at all. “I will.”

Shizuo can feel worry reasserting itself against the inside of his chest, can feel the stress of concern spreading to chill his blood in an echo of his panic from days before. “You should,” he says again, a little more firmly. “Or I can make something else, if you--”

“Thank you.”

It’s quiet, careful, so soft Shizuo doesn’t recognize Izaya’s voice on the words, wouldn’t know it was the other speaking at all were he not looking right at the shift of his mouth. Shizuo’s voice dies in his throat, air and coherency failing him at once, and Izaya blinks once and swallows hard enough that Shizuo can see the motion.

“Thank you,” he repeats, and then he lifts his chin to meet Shizuo’s gaze. His jaw is set, his mouth strangely soft; there’s no smirk, no frown, just an odd give to his lips like he’s struggling to hold them steady. Shizuo can hear the sound of the breath he takes clear as if it’s filling the whole room, can see the way Izaya’s shoulders straighten to determination. “You don’t have to stay.”

Shizuo blinks. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t know what to say; but Izaya is still talking, still holding the other’s gaze even as his mouth starts to tremble and his throat works on the effort of speech. “I’m grateful,” he says, and it’s almost even, it’s almost level, Shizuo almost can’t hear the threat of tears taut under the words. Izaya blinks hard and clears his throat roughly. “I’m grateful,” he says again, and it’s flat this time, sufficiently stripped of emotion that Shizuo can’t hear the tells anymore. “But you don’t have to keep pretending.”

It takes Shizuo a moment to catch up to the unstated assumption. It’s hard to think straight with Izaya’s eyes dark in the fading light and his mouth trembling like he’s going to fall apart at any second, hard to hold to coherency when all Shizuo wants to do is reach out to still the motion of Izaya’s shaking shoulders with his hands. But then his mind catches up, and his eyes go wider, and Shizuo can see Izaya flinch from his expression as if from a blow that hasn’t fallen yet.

“I’m not,” Shizuo starts, but his throat closes up, on laughter or tears he doesn’t know which. Izaya’s forehead creases, his mouth draws into a frown, and Shizuo chokes a breath, fighting for coherency to keep speaking. “I’m not pretending.” He coughs, a laugh and a sob at once, and when he reaches out to push Izaya’s hair back from his face Izaya gasps a breath, his whole body tensing with immediate reaction to Shizuo’s touch against his skin.

“I’m not pretending,” Shizuo says again, and Izaya’s mouth is starting to tremble, his eyes are going impossibly dark with collecting liquid. Shizuo comes up on his knees to lean in closer towards the other; Izaya tips back, his shoulders hitting the arm of the couch, but his gaze is dropping from Shizuo’s eyes to his mouth, and his lips are going soft as Shizuo leans in. Shizuo catches his fingers against Izaya’s hair, presses his thumb just against Izaya’s cheek, and Izaya takes a breath, his lashes dipping heavy over his eyes. Shizuo smiles, feeling the weight of it catch in his throat, and when he says “Not everyone is as untrustworthy as you are,” it comes out as almost a laugh on his tongue. Izaya huffs a startled burst of sound, a little bit a laugh and mostly a sob, and Shizuo shuts his eyes and closes the gap between their mouths to press his lips to the other’s.

Izaya’s mouth is warm against his.


	20. --:--

Izaya doesn’t weigh enough.

Shizuo knows it beforehand. He could feel it in the too-light pressure Izaya offered on his lap while they were still on the couch, before the joint effort of Izaya’s mouth against his neck and Izaya’s words purring against his skin finally shattered the restraint Shizuo has had fraying in him over the past days of watching color return to Izaya’s skin and shadows return to his eyes. He’s been tracking the darkness behind Izaya’s gaze, watching it crest like the rising threat of violence until it finally gave way today to bring Izaya pushing himself up off the support of the couch arm and climbing bodily to angle his knees wide around Shizuo’s hips and press the frail lines of his body against Shizuo’s chest.

“Shizu-chan,” he said, his voice a purr, suggestion and temptation and demand all at once. Shizuo could hear the threat of teeth under the word, could feel the edge of them against his ear as clearly as the drag of Izaya’s fingernails against the back of his neck. “Take me to bed.”

“No,” Shizuo said, aiming for self-control that has been giving way with the flush that comes with every press of Izaya’s mouth to his, struggling for long-since absent restraint to draw back from the weight of Izaya’s hands grasping for purchase against his hair. “When you’re better, I’ll--”

“I’m better,” Izaya snapped, cutting the words off like broken glass and arching his spine to rock himself in hard against Shizuo’s chest. His fingers felt like knives at Shizuo’s throat, his hips cut with razor-sharp edges when Shizuo reached to hold him back; but it’s the heat that was the worst, the radiance bleeding off all his skin and hard at the front of his jeans until it was all Shizuo could do to hold him still and there was no resistance left in him at all to actually push the other away. “I’m eating and I’m drinking and I’m sleeping, what more do you want me to do?”

“You’re too thin,” Shizuo tried to say, but Izaya was rocking forward again, the grinding force of his action too weak to break Shizuo’s hold but overcoming it anyway, somehow, to fit his hips against Shizuo’s, to press the open angle of his legs against the front of Shizuo’s pants. Shizuo’s eyelids fluttered, his attention going hazy for a moment, and when he said, “Soon” he heard surrender on his tongue before he knew it was coming.

“Now,” Izaya said, rolling the sound over on his tongue to pour against the shell of Shizuo’s ear. “Now, Shizuo, take me to bed.” When he moved again there was no resistance in Shizuo’s arms at all, no strength behind the angle of his push to urge Izaya away, and then Izaya offered a faint, stuttering exhale against Shizuo’s neck as he rocked his hips forward hard, and Shizuo’s hands slid to catch around his waist instead of bracing to hold him off, his arm angling around the other’s body so he could spread his fingers wide across the sharp edge of Izaya’s flexing shoulder and pull him in closer. Izaya made a faint, startled sound of pleasure, and Shizuo doesn’t know what happened after that, except that it brought him here: stumbling down the hall towards Izaya’s bedroom, with one hand braced at the other’s thigh and one against his back while Izaya clings to him with arms and legs and presses kisses to his neck. Izaya is all sharp angles, razor edges and broken glass everywhere Shizuo touches, and he’s too thin, there’s too much fragile bone too easily to snap with an accidental action; but Shizuo’s moving anyway, fumbling his way down the hallway by instinct more than sight, because he’s turning his head in sideways to reach for a kiss, to land his mouth at Izaya’s hair since he can’t reach the other’s mouth like as they are.

“You’re too skinny,” Shizuo says again, as they clear the doorway to the bedroom, as he steers them in the vague direction of the bed and the tangle of sheets he’s left atop it. “Izaya, I’m going to hurt you.”

“No,” Izaya breathes, his voice shuddering in the back of his throat. Shizuo’s shins hit the bed and he falls forward, barely getting an arm up in time to catch his weight and keep from crushing Izaya against the too-soft of the mattress. Izaya lands hard, his hold around Shizuo’s neck and waist jarred loose by the impact, and for a moment Shizuo’s heart seizes on fear; but Izaya just gasps an inhale, and shakes himself back into focus, and blinks up at Shizuo with his eyes wide and darker than Shizuo has ever seen them.

“No,” he says again, and he’s reaching back out, his fingers catching at the back of Shizuo’s neck, and his hold is feather-light, it shouldn’t be enough to pull the other down towards him but it is, it might as well be a collar for how helpless Shizuo is to resist. Izaya’s mouth quirks, the familiar angle of his smile threatening his lips, and he tips his chin up to make an offering of his mouth for Shizuo. “You’ll be careful.”

“I don’t _want_ to hurt you,” Shizuo agrees, and that’s not all he wants to say but Izaya is pulling him closer and he can’t resist even to finish his sentence. He comes in nearer instead, surrendering the end of his thought for the friction of Izaya’s mouth on his, and Izaya makes a low note of satisfaction in the back of his throat and reaches up to pin Shizuo’s head between the hold of both his hands at once. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his blood racing to heat in his veins; and then under him Izaya shifts, his body arching to push the sharp edges of bone against his shirt, and Shizuo whimpers at the feel of those too-delicate lines against his palm.

“It would be an accident,” he says as Izaya lets him go, as Izaya blinks his eyes open to stare endless shadow at Shizuo’s face. His lips are parted, his breathing catching faster; Shizuo can see the effort straining in his shoulders, can hear how hard the other’s inhales are coming in his chest. “It would be so easy if I forgot to be careful for just a second.”

“I know,” Izaya says, and his eyes are dark and his voice is level and Shizuo’s never heard him sound so sincere. “You won’t.” And then, with another drag of that smile, the one that catches the corners of his eyes into bright like sunlight glinting off metal: “I trust you, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo can feel the words settle onto his shoulders, can feel the weight of them like the burden that Izaya’s frame in his arms should have been and wasn’t. It makes his breathing stick in his chest, twists his expression into a grimace of almost-pain, and Izaya laughs and reaches for Shizuo’s shirt.

“Come here,” he says, and Shizuo does, because he can’t refuse, because somewhere during the past span of days he has forgotten how to resist the siren song of Izaya’s smile. All he knows now is the surrender, the warm press of Izaya’s mouth against his, until even when Izaya’s fingers close at his wrist to urge his hand down against dark clothes Shizuo doesn’t pull away to see what he’s doing. He does it all one-handed, unfastening Izaya’s jeans and urging them off his hips, and Izaya’s moving under him to drag his legs free and catching his fingertips at buttons to work Shizuo’s shirt open but even then, even when Izaya fits his palm up under Shizuo’s pushed-up undershirt to weight his hand against the flex of effort in the other’s chest, Shizuo doesn’t look down, and he doesn’t pull away; he stays where he is, angled over the sharp lines of Izaya’s body under him, and lets Izaya catch his shuddering reaction to the contact against the part of his lips.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya breathes, turning his head up closer, trailing Shizuo’s mouth as the other loses track of what he’s doing, as heat overcomes his attention and drops his head to the curve of Izaya’s throat instead of the cut of his mouth. Izaya’s hand pushes up higher, his wrist catching the soft of Shizuo’s shirt, and Shizuo can feel his heart racing faster in his chest, can feel the desperate thud of adrenaline surging all through his body to press itself against the friction of Izaya’s palm against his skin. “Take this off.”

“ _God_ ,” Shizuo groans, a response so broken it’s no kind of response at all. He rocks himself down for a moment, catching the open angle of Izaya’s legs with the friction of his pants; and then he pushes up and away in a rush, forcing himself backwards before he can lose his attention again. His shirt is easily shed, shrugged off as fast as Izaya can sit up to push at it, and he’s still working his wrists free of the cuffs when Izaya curls his fingers beneath the undershirt and starts dragging it up to follow. He has it around Shizuo’s shoulders by the time the other can lift his arms to allow for the removal, and Shizuo’s still trying to collect himself from the abrupt loss of his shirt when Izaya tosses it aside and reaches for the hem of his own.

“Wait,” Shizuo says without thinking, reflex coming sudden on his tongue, and he reaches out to catch at Izaya’s wrist and stall him halfway through the action. “Let me.”

Izaya raises an eyebrow, quirks the start of a grin at him; but he lets his hold fall, lets his arms drop to his sides to make a passive invitation of his position. The shirt’s the only thing he still has on but Shizuo doesn’t look down to the pale inside of Izaya’s thighs or the flushed dark of his cock; his attention is caught by the soft of the fabric against his palms, by the way it collects in on itself as he urges the shirt up and off the lines of Izaya’s chest. He’s too thin, visibly so as Shizuo strips his shirt off and over his head -- Shizuo can see the outline of his ribs under his skin, can see collarbones like blades too-close to the surface as Izaya raises his arms in surrender to the motion -- but there’s a flush over his skin too, color warming his body to match the kissed-in flush at his mouth as he shakes his head free of his shirt collar. His hair is dark like ink, his eyes blown so black Shizuo can’t see the suggestion of crimson behind them, and when Shizuo drops Izaya’s shirt and reaches for him it’s the tracery of bone under skin his palm finds, it’s the pattern of the other’s breathing that he catches in the span of his fingers. Izaya huffs a laugh, and flashes a smile, and when he leans back to the bed Shizuo follows him, pressing his hand against the other’s body with a weight more trembling-terrified than bracing.

“You should take your pants off,” Izaya suggests, the words as fluidly casual as if he’s not breathing harder under Shizuo’s touch, as if Shizuo can’t see the way he’s shifting his knees wider into unconscious invitation for the press of Shizuo’s hips between them. He reaches out, his fingers catching against the front of Shizuo’s dark slacks, and for just a moment Shizuo can feel the shiver in the other’s touch, can see the tremor running along his arm before his hold tightens and the motion steadies out to invisibility.

“Yes,” Shizuo says, agreement coming easy on the heat along his spine; it still takes him a moment to pull back, takes him a breath to disentangle his attention from the pattern of Izaya’s breathing coming faster under the weight of his hand. Finally he rocks back, ducking his head to pin his attention to his actions as he unfastens his slacks and pushes them off with more haste than elegance. He half-expects some kind of teasing comment from Izaya’s languid sprawl across the bed, but there’s nothing, just the audible catch of the other’s breathing as he turns sideways to reach for something along the head of the bed. Shizuo looks up as he pushes his clothing off onto the floor, and for a moment he can see the whole line of Izaya’s body in front of him, from the tense angle of his bracing leg up the curve of his waist and along the line of his arm as he stretches. Shizuo has to reach out, can’t help but reach out; he can see Izaya’s shudder of laughter as Shizuo’s hand catches at his side, as Shizuo fits his thumb against the strain of breathing under the other’s skin.

“I told you,” he says, and then he twists back, falling onto his back as Shizuo catches and steadies the motion with his hold. “You should have taken me to bed days ago, Shizu-chan.”

“I would have hurt you,” Shizuo protests, but it’s a weak attempt, worn thin against the edge of his distraction as Izaya works open the lid of the bottle in his hands and reaches to draw Shizuo’s free hand towards him. “You needed to recover.”

“No,” Izaya says. The liquid is cool against Shizuo’s fingers, slick to the touch and dripping against his palm; Shizuo shudders, his attention drawing down the line of Izaya’s body, and Izaya shifts his knees open wider, bracing a heel against the sheets to make a tense line of the inside of his leg. “No, I needed this.”

“It would have been too much,” Shizuo tries to tell him, but the words catch in the back of his throat and his attention is fracturing open as he reaches slick fingers down to the open suggestion of Izaya’s legs, as Izaya drops the bottle over the edge of the bed and reaches up to wind his fingers into Shizuo’s hair. “This would have been too much.”

“No,” Izaya says again, and he sounds so sure, he sounds more certain than Shizuo has ever known him to be about anything before. “It would have been enough.”

“God,” Shizuo says, the sound hot and helpless on his tongue, and he touches his fingertips to Izaya’s skin, presses the cool slick of the liquid against the flushed heat of the other’s body. Izaya shudders underneath him, Shizuo can feel the tremor press against the weight of his hand, and Shizuo can’t breathe and he can’t think but he’s moving anyway, pushing against Izaya to ease the stretch of one finger just inside the other. Izaya shudders again, his whole body quivering, but he’s hot to the touch and hotter the farther Shizuo slides into him, like he’s going more radiant with every half-inch of friction.

“Oh,” Shizuo says, because it’s difficult to find coherency and easy to spill sound, because that one shocked reaction is all he can find to encompass the feel of Izaya tensing around him, to span the way he can feel the hiss of the other’s shuddering inhales straining against the weight of his hand against Izaya’s ribcage. “Oh, god, Izaya.”

“Shizuo,” Izaya gasps, his usual teasing nickname forgotten somewhere in the shimmer of heat on his voice and the tension purring under his skin. His fingers flex in Shizuo’s hair, drag into fists like he’s going to urge the other closer, but when Shizuo looks up there’s no demand in Izaya’s face, nothing behind the dark in his eyes except the same heat Shizuo can feel catching into every inch of his body at all the points they touch. Izaya swallows, his throat working visibly on the effort, and then: “Keep going,” a plea more than a command, a request and not an order.

Shizuo keeps going. He’s not sure he could make himself stop even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to, there’s no part of him that wants to stop now that he has Izaya quaking into heat underneath him. Izaya shuts his eyes when Shizuo moves his hand, his lashes falling against his cheek like they’re too heavy to hold up, and Shizuo stares at him, watching the ripples of reaction he can draw over Izaya’s expression with the careful motion of his hand. He can see the flicker of discomfort when he moves too fast, can see the tension at Izaya’s mouth telling him to go slower, to be more gentle, to ease the angle of his wrist or the weight of his fingers to coax Izaya to heat instead of forcing him to it. He can feel the rhythm of Izaya’s breathing catching under his palm, can feel the shiver for more working in the fingers in his hair, until when he draws away to push back in with two fingers Izaya groans far in the back of his throat, a sound so knocked-open on helpless heat Shizuo can’t even make the syllables of his name out from it, can’t even stand to watch the tremors of heat ripple across Izaya’s face. He has to lean in closer, has to let his hold on Izaya go to brace his weight against the bed as he tips himself forward and pins Izaya down with the weight of his body instead of the press of his hand. Izaya arches under him, curving up off the mattress to meet Shizuo’s skin with his own, and Shizuo can’t find the words for the aching heat in him, can’t find coherency for anything at all in his throat. He presses his face in against Izaya’s neck instead, breathing in against the licorice-sweet of the other’s skin, and when he slides his fingers in deeper he can feel Izaya’s shudder of reaction under his lips, can feel the tremor of it run all through the sharp angles of the body pinned under him. It’s more than he can bear, more than he can stand to lose, and for a moment all his attention draws into too-close focus, pinpoints the rhythm of Izaya tensing around his fingers and the tickle of dark hair against his skin and the tug of the other’s hold tightening against his neck, like Izaya’s trying to brace himself in place against the support of Shizuo’s shoulders. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his blood rushing sunbright heat through his veins; and then Izaya takes a breath, and says, “Shizuo,” and Shizuo doesn’t need anything else to know what he means.

He goes still at once. There was a rhythm between them, a pattern to the curve of Izaya’s spine and the press of Shizuo’s fingers; but they both stop moving simultaneously, Izaya falling back to the support of the bed as Shizuo draws his touch back from the heat of Izaya’s body. His hand is shaking when he reaches for himself, the slick of his touch dragging almost clumsily over the flush of his cock, but Izaya is shifting under him, spreading his knees wider still and bracing his feet at the bed, and Shizuo can’t pay attention to what he’s doing, not with Izaya making an offering of himself like he’s blossoming under Shizuo’s touch. He only takes the time to stroke himself to slickness, until he’s trembling with the weight of anticipation unfolding in his veins; and then Izaya’s fingers catch at his shoulder, and pull him down, and Shizuo lets himself drop forward to fit between the open angle of Izaya’s thighs. Izaya’s hot to the touch, all his skin radiant as if with a fever, and he shifts as soon as Shizuo moves closer to him, hooking a leg around Shizuo’s hip and reaching up to angle his arm around the other’s shoulders. Shizuo reaches for his hip, his hand sliding under the curve of Izaya’s spine to brace at the small of his back, and Izaya arches towards him, his whole body tilting up to meet Shizuo’s. For a moment they’re pressed together like that, skin against flushed-warm skin and Izaya clinging to Shizuo like he’s a lifeline; then Shizuo takes a breath, and gasps an exhale, and rocks his hips forward. There’s the drag of friction, a moment of resistance; then Izaya sighs, and shudders, and Shizuo slides forward and into the radiant heat of the other’s body. He can feel the way Izaya tenses at the force, can feel the whole-body tremor that runs through him; but the hand in his hair is tight on a fist, and Izaya’s leg is bracing hard against his hip, and Shizuo doesn’t stop, just leans hard against the support of his trembling arm and pushes forward as carefully slow as he can. Izaya is panting for air, now, gasping lungfuls of breath like he can’t find space for oxygen in his lungs, but his fingers are tensing at Shizuo’s hair, his legs flexing to arch his body closer, and Shizuo can feel the strain of heat curving in his back, can feel the effort of Izaya trying to lift himself nearer in the shift of the other’s body under his bracing hand. It makes him groan, makes “ _Izaya_ ” spill past his lips on an unstudied slur of heat, and Izaya whimpers something high and desperate and pleading. Shizuo has to draw back slow, has to slide back in slower still, and he’s angling his bracing elbow without thinking, reaching to catch his hold against Izaya’s hair like he’s trying to hold the other in place against the force, like he’s trying to catch him in the cage of his hands and hold him steady against the strain of their joint movement. Izaya’s arm slides, his forehead bumps Shizuo’s shoulder, and when Shizuo moves again he can feel the rush of Izaya’s exhale gusting hard against him like the flame from a candle licking at his skin.

It’s impossible to think clearly. Shizuo loses track of time, of space, of the whole of the universe around them; there’s just the space of the bed, even the edges of that gone hazy and unimportant when held against the tremor of Izaya’s body against his as Shizuo moves into him. Shizuo’s shoulders tip down, the angle of his body shifting to pin Izaya against the sheets, but Izaya’s still shaking, still quivering like he’s going to fall apart if Shizuo loosens his hold on him. Shizuo can trace out the curve of Izaya’s spine under his fingers, can hear the hiss of the other’s breathing coming hard against his shoulder, and there’s sound there, too, first the whine of desperate lungfuls of air and then half-formed moans, as Shizuo finds a rhythm, as Izaya catches both legs around Shizuo’s hips and tightens his hold on Shizuo’s hair. By the time Izaya is shaking with every thrust the other takes Shizuo can hear his name on the sounds, can hear the outline of “Shizuo” repeated over and over again like it’s spilling as helplessly from Izaya’s tongue as the long-gone flowers. It’s almost a sob, Shizuo can hear the shudder of emotion under Izaya’s voice, but he doesn’t turn his head to see the damp collecting at Izaya’s cheeks or the open-mouthed gasp of air at his lips; he can’t actually catch his own breath to calm, not when every rush of heat in his veins feels like a rising wave of sensation too much to bear in peace, not when Izaya is holding as tight to him as if Shizuo is the only thing keeping him attached to reality.

Shizuo can feel the shift of Izaya’s chest against his as the other gasps air, can feel the tension aching all along the inside of his thighs with every stroke he takes, and Izaya’s voice is cracking on his name, skidding higher and hotter to turn the syllables into a plea for something Shizuo doesn’t know how to give him. All he can do is tighten his carefully delicate hold, feeling the shift of Izaya’s spine under his palm, and then he turns his head in against Izaya’s throat and chokes out “ _Izaya_ ” from some shadow deep in his chest, the sound coming from a low depth he didn’t know he had in him. Izaya shudders, his whole body going tense for a moment as his breathing catches; and Shizuo rocks forward and into him and he shatters all at once, all the air leaving his lungs in a rush Shizuo can hear at his shoulder like a sob. Izaya’s trembling through his orgasm, his whole body quivering under Shizuo as he tenses around him, and Shizuo can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t even close his mouth on the gasp of his breathing that is turning to Izaya’s name, that is sounding more like a prayer with every repetition. Izaya is shaking under him, and gasping for air at his shoulder, and Shizuo can hear the relief on his breath, can hear the whimper of pleasure tense the other’s throat with every thrust he takes, and it’s too much, it’s more than he can bear, and his hold tightens to pin Izaya close against him as he thrusts forward in a sudden, helpless rush and comes as the wave of heat crashes and breaks over him. Izaya gusts a breath against his shoulder, tightens his hold at Shizuo’s neck, and Shizuo can feel the other breathing within the span of his arm, can feel the proof of his existence as clearly as he can hear the gasp of his inhales, and for just a moment everything is just that: the pleasure trembling through him, the heat at his skin, the effort of his own breathing, all of it narrows to fit into the feel of Izaya caught in the cage of his arm.

It’s long seconds before Shizuo eases his hold on Izaya; even then, it’s a shift more than pulling away, just sliding his arm up the line of the other’s spine to catch his hold against the edge of fragile shoulderblades. Izaya huffs a laugh, lifting his head from Shizuo’s shoulder to turn in to his hair instead; when he tightens his hold around the other’s neck Shizuo can feel the motion tug like wings under Izaya’s skin.

“Shizuo,” Izaya says against his ear, whispering the word so softly Shizuo can’t hear any of the razor edge that usually clings to the other’s voice.

Shizuo takes a breath, tasting the bite of licorice harsh on his tongue. “Mm.”

Izaya’s fingers tighten in his hair. “I love you.”

Shizuo lifts his head. Izaya lets him, his hold easing in time with Shizuo drawing back; when Shizuo blinks down at him Izaya’s staring up, his eyes dark and endless in the shadow of Shizuo’s body. His lashes are still damp, clinging to the lingering weight of tears, but his mouth is soft, and his gaze is gentle like Shizuo’s never seen it before.

Shizuo takes a breath. “I love you too,” he says, careful and clear, and then he leans in while Izaya’s mouth is still curving on the first shocked-warm spill of happiness. Shizuo catches him mid-smile, stalling the beginnings of what might be a laugh and might be a word between their lips, and when Izaya’s fingers tighten in his hair to hold him still he doesn’t try to pull away.

Izaya tastes like sugar on Shizuo’s tongue.


End file.
